As I write this its 4am Monday morning and I’m waiting for my flight back to Charlotte, a little early to say the least, but I have to work this morning and it’s not too strange of an occurrence for lacrosse players trying to maximize their chance to play at every opportunity. Especially indoor players, a high level box lacrosse game summertime in Charlotte doesn’t just find you. So myself and 20 other guys decided to spend our summer with the US Indoor Developmental team to play as often as I could and not lose too much of the progress made since starting to play last year.
Our first trip as a team was this past weekend to Vermont, to play 2 exhibitions versus the Voyageurs (as you may know from reading Vince’s post yesterday), a QSLL Senior B team. Our squad is a group of American players just looking to get experience playing the indoor game by playing against some good competition. And we’re talking serious commitment here to play. We had some warriors on our team who drove 15 hours Friday night to get to Vermont at 3am.
While just a few months ago I was truly a first timer, by the time we took the floor Saturday morning for practice I was one of the more experienced guys, which puts a whole new spin on the learning that happens on the floor and my role on offense. All developments in my game I welcomed.
I can’t say enough about how beautiful Burlington Vermont was this time of year. Day 1 was a nice one starting the day with some breakfast at a café by the marina and an amazing view of the Adirondack Mountains towering over Lake Champlain. We had morning practice, followed by a team lunch back at the Marina right on the Lake and then we were headed to the arena for the first game.
As a lot of our guys were playing their first indoor game ever, in the first game things started off a little franticly in the USA box. A few early goals settled everything down and close battle continued through the first period. The Voyageurs scored a few quick ones and had a couple goal lead after the first. It turned out to be a lead we couldn’t overcome the rest of the night. We spent the next period battling it out to keep the score close, and went into the final period down 3. That final period showed that the conditioning of our mostly outdoor players in their first indoor games of the summer wasn’t quite up to par, and Vermont started to pull away. We weren’t completely out of gas and were able to put one last run together and closed the gap to 2 goals with a minute remaining. We pulled the goalie and got a couple great looks that didn’t fall and they put an empty netter in to get the win 15-12.
While it wasn’t the result we were after, the Voyageurs were first class hosts and competition who deserved the victory. One of the coolest parts of playing on this developmental team is getting to wear the uniforms. While we know we aren’t the world team out there, as the weekend evolved, you can sense the pride of wearing a USA jersey and representing something that is bigger than you in the guys. It really helps the team aspect of our group take hold a little faster. I think we proved a little to ourselves, as a bunch of guys who had never played together before, putting it together hanging with a good team. We took that momentum with us Saturday night and chalked up the mistakes to the learning process.
There was a little party for both teams at Sweetwater’s after the game, most of the guys grabbed some food and a few drinks and made their way up and down Church Street to experience all that this town has to offer. I haven’t seen too many places in America with more nightlife going on than Burlington. It really was fun, but it wasn’t too late of a night as we had the rematch just 15 hours later.
The 2nd game Sunday was at 1pm and at the start it was clear we were a little fresher group, we jumped out to a 4-0 lead. Vermont scored one to slow us down but into the second period we pulled ahead to 6-1 at one point. As a team, we really started to eliminate a lot of the mistakes that had cost us in Saturday night’s game and it was showing. Late in the third the Voyageurs made a solid comeback and cut our lead to 9-6, but a late breakaway goal finished it off and we pulled out the victory. A nice reward for the effort that went into the weekend.
Overall we had a great time, learned a ton, got to see a beautiful part of the country at the perfect time of year and came away .500 Not too bad for a bunch of Americans just learning this indoor game. Looking forward to next time.
