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European Lacrosse League: Berlin, Germany = Success!

Editor’s Note: Please welcome Jamie Plunkett and the Deutschland Adler Lacrosse Club back to LAS! The DALC just hosted Germany’s first European Lacrosse League box tournament, and the event went off extremely well, even with some expected bumps in the road. Germany has a bright future in the box lacrosse world!

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The second European Lacrosse League tournament weekend brought players from all over Europe to Berlin. For the first time the ELL, wass played outside the Czech and Slovak Republics, and first-year ELL franchise, the Deutschland Adler Lacrosse Club, was the host!

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Everyone here in Berlin, and many others in the German lacrosse community, were very excited to be hosting an ELL tournament. After months of trying to find a perfect location, I finally managed to secure a proper facility for us to host the ELL weekend, and hopefully many more Box events.

The weekend didn’t start out ideally for us. Upon arrival to the rink, we had the surprise of a wet surface; unbeknown to us it had rained the night before. However, this didn’t stop us from getting underway on time. The ELL players and officials worked together to get the floor dry in time for practices to start at 10:30 Saturday morning.

After we finished our pre-game practice we passed out our GTG shirts from Lacrosse All Stars and our bag fresheners from Odor Gladiator.

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The first Berlin ELL game was Aitcom Pardubce versus Radotin Wolves. The Wolves won a close game, 7-6. The second game featured the premier German Box Lacrosse team’s faceoff on home soil, as ELL Blue sought revenge on the DALC after week one’s 3rd place game. This was one of the most exciting ELL games I have ever played in. It had everything: come backs, blown leads, a shoot out and major controversy.

I could feel it in the dressing room just how excited everybody was to finally be together and playing Box in Deutschland. I was very proud to see that my teammates were just as excited as I was.

The first period started out nicely for us, I managed to get the 1st goal early in the game at around the 40-second mark. The 1st period was back and fourth and finished 4-3, in favor of the DALC.

It was all Blue in the second period when American Sean Menz (who coaches in Germany with the Dresden Braves) managed to put the ball in the net 4 times. We found ourselves behind 10-6 after the second.

German superstar and long time teammate and friend Hendrick du-Bois Reymond took the team under his wing in the 3rd along with Brian Tyacke. The pair pulled off 3rd period hat tricks to pull us even. As a teammate it was great to see, and as their coach and GM, it was absolutely amazing seeing the team come together when being faced with a little adversity.

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We managed tie the game up, which forced the game to go to a shoot out. Myself, Pavel Dosly and Brian Tyacke were named to shoot for our team. Adam Ondracek, Emil Moravec and Sean Menz were seleted for Blue. I was first to shoot and would be the only one to score out of the first 5 shooters. Menz needed to score to keep the game going. Menz heads in on DALC goalie, Dominik Sika, and puts one off his shoulder and into the air.

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This is when it gets interesting. The referee blows his whistle and we all run to Dominik, but just then the ball bounced into the net and is then signalled a goal. After a lengthily chat is finally decided that the ref had stopped play with the whistle and awarded the victory to us.  This is something that proved huge for everybody on the team; not only to win the 1st game at home but to do it in such a fashion was truly amazing,

In our second game we played against Old Dogs Plzen, who we easily handled, and we won 12-8. With that win it sent us to the finals where we faced LC Bisons of Radotin, which possess the skills of the most experienced Czech players.

This wouldn’t be an easy game for us and we knew it, but right from the start the guys fought hard and found ourselves with an early lead. It was quickly erased and we found ourselves down 5-3 at the end of the 1st.

The second period had been our weakest period by far all weekend. In the finals the guys turned that around, and with goals from Wolfgang Griessl Tim Wunderlich and Chrissi Frank, just to name a few, we found ourselves out on top at the end of the second.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep the momentum going much longer, as the experienced Czech team managed to mount a comeback, and scored the last 4 goals of the game to win 14-13. Despite the loss, I was very proud of my team. For many of them, this was the first time they had played a real box lacrosse game and I am honoured and humbled for being able to grant these great players the opportunity to do so in their home country.

We are right back in action this weekend as the ELL heads back to the Czech hotbed of Radotin for the final two weekends. After 6 games played here are the league standings to date:

LC Bison Radotin – 34.5 pts

Deutschland Adler – 23.5 pts

Aitcom Pardubice – 21.5 pts

Wolves Radotin – 15.5 pts

Old Dogs Plzen – 15 pts

ELL BLUE  – 10 pts

EN: We love seeing the growth of box lacrosse in Europe, and we especially love seeing the game take off on an OFFICIAL level in Germany! The DALC is currently sitting in second in the ELL, and it’s incredibly impressive for a first year franchise to be seeing that much success. Good luck to the entire ELL for the rest of the season and come back to LAS for more in the coming weeks!