Photo Credit: Di Miller
On Saturday September 27, the Metropolitan State University of Denver Men’s Lacrosse team took on UCD (University of Colorado at Denver) in their second game of the fall season. Both teams share the same campus in downtown Denver and so the rivalry as to who would come out on top was in everyone’s minds. Final score: Metro State University 20—UCD 14.
MSU (Metropolitan State University) has almost doubled the size of their team since the spring season ended. They have attained some extremely strong and talented players. MSU had multiple players taking face-offs, including Alex Frimm #7; Sam Houser #17; Corbin Korsgard #13; Drew Lazar #18; and Alex Brodd #11. In goal, you’ve got a new-comer to the team Bryson Olejnik #21. The remaining players are: Kyle Miller #16, Max Rogers-Jackson #9; Mitch Larson #3; Phillip Garand #24; Khalid Alshami #6; Raquib Hakeem #4; Joey Huntley #5; Chris Jasen #14; Josh Rice #19; Cole Martin #12; Josh Davis #2; and Chris Gerken #19.
New Head Coach Aaron Meyer has done a fabulous job coaching this group of players. There are a lot of incoming freshmen and playing college ball for the first time can be a challenge. His coaching skills; creating new drills; and pushing for “team play” are big in his repertoire.
Metro State came out strong in the first quarter, going up on UCD by the score of 7 to 3. UCD wasn’t going to be shut down so easily. Their offense kicked in and their goalie started making some pretty amazing saves. Metro was a little off on ground balls and there were some penalties that cost MSU some key possessions. In the second quarter, Metro had scored only two goals to five by UCD. At the end of the first half the score was Metro 9-UCD 8.
When half-time came around, Head Coach Meyer had five minutes to get the team in the huddle and pull them together. He asked them “How bad do you want to win this game? You’re better than this.” The team got fired up, started talking strategy and what they needed to do to turn it around. That’s when he pulled out the play board, reminded them of the plays they had been working on during practice, and told them “This is what I want you to do. You know you can do this, now do it.”
When the second half started, you could see the determination in the eyes of the Metro State players, but UCD was still controlling the ball for the first half of the quarter. Their offense was possessing the ball; the defense was causing turnovers giving them back possession; and had so many of their shots on goal not hit pipe, UCD would have put at least five more goals on the board. Metro had to turn it around and they finally did. They started making good passes; the defense wasn’t missing their slides; they were running good plays; and most importantly, they were working as a team and communicating. They held UCD to only four goals in the third quarter, while scoring five goals of their own. Score at the end of the third: Metro 14-UCD 12.
At the start of the fourth quarter, UCD knew they had to get it together if they wanted to beat their opponent, but Metro started running their plays like clock-work. They were making good passes; controlled the ball; slowed down the game; ran the right routes; and most importantly, the defense protected the goalie. Metro turned it around scoring six goals and held UCD to two. Metro went on to win the game by the score of 20-14, making them 2 and 0 on the season.
After the game I interviewed Kyle Miller #16 Midfielder about his thoughts on the first half and what they did to turn it around in the second half and here’s what he had to say:
“In the first quarter, we played hard going up on UCD in a big way. When the second quarter came around, we got too comfortable; we were flat; and weren’t playing our game. They scored probably five or six goals on us in the second quarter and we weren’t playing with the intensity that we started with. So, during the half-time huddle everyone started talking about what they needed to do. I told the team to pick up the intensity, that we were losing ground balls and possession time. I told the guys that UCD possessed the ball most of the second quarter and that we needed to slow it down and step it up. In the second half, we ran our plays like we were supposed to. We got the ground balls; we used our speed and strength, took that intensity from the first quarter and finally got it back late in the third. We wanted that win, and we just did it.”
Bryson Olejnik was amazing in goal making 21 saves. On the face-offs, Metro State was on the low side winning only 15 of 34 for a FOPCT of .442. The team had a combined 30 GB, and 40 SOG.
MVP of the game—Drew Lazar #18 Midfielder with 6 G, 16 SOG and 1 A.
On October 5th, Metropolitan State heads to the Colorado School of Mines to avenge their loss to them on April 18th, where the final score was 11-7.
