I like playing at the Du Burns arena in Baltimore. Even though it has a lot of weird little annoying things like the blinding windows and the awful locker room layout, it also has a lot going for it. The turf is one of the best in the league, the fans show up to games and seem to know about lacrosse and, most importantly, we are 2-0 in the building this season. Our past four games have been good on both the offense and defense side. We’ve been a good team so far this season because we have been unselfish. Unselfish players and unselfish coaches.
There is also one aspect of our game that makes us successful, transition! The NALL is a good league with great athletes but it is not made of mainly experienced box or indoor lacrosse players. This usually ends up showing during games when you watch the plays in transition. You can even see this in the NLL where teams like Toronto and Calgary have been dominant in transition so far this winter.
It is such a simple game but its high intensity makes it a game of errors and the biggest mistakes you can make are in transition. A good transition player will score pretty much every game and his name will show up often on the score sheet. A great transition player however will run the floor bring the ball down low, and pull out 9 times out of 10 to set up the offense. Kevin Drew played an unbelievable game for us on Sunday. He was the unselfish hero of that game and anyone that knows box lacrosse and watched the game probably noticed his plays in transition.
Mike Stone played amazing and scored 7 goals, Andrew Kirkaldy, Marty Bowes and Ryan Hoffmeister ran the lefty side of our offensive set like champions. Our defense squad made me look good. But the first star of the game goes to Kevin for understanding how to play transition and most importantly executing! Teams are always looking for guys like that and we are very fortunate to have him.
Thanks for reading.
