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Lax Link-O-Rama Is For The Children

It’s mid-January and lacrosse players across the US are holed up inside, stringing sticks, staying fit and eagerly anticipating the Spring season.  Professional indoor lacrosse is in its second week with a mix of new and familiar faces leading the way.  The college season is just around the corner (if you consider scrimmages part of the season) and that always provides so much good material!  A lot of good gear has come out so far and my favorites have to be 1) Maryland’s STX gloves and pads. hands down favorite. 2) UMBC’s Brine glove.  I’ve only seen one glove for them but it’s sick. 3) Georgetown’s gloves.  Good variety and the mostly grey ones are special.  4) Penn State’s classic navy and white. 5) Maverik’s UVM and Hopkins glove mockups.  5 is as high as I can go for only a mockup from UVM but the Hopkins glove (which will never be used by the Hop) looks legit.  Harvard, Loyola, and others did pretty well but overall it seems like people went really conservative this year.  I guess every year can’t be brighter than the next… where would we go next?  European alternate soccer jersey motif?  Wait, that doesn’t actually sound that bad.

And because people like custom gear and more importantly, gear in general, stuff like this can still happen.  Making a living doing what you love… not too shabby.  Canada really does love lax, doesn’t it?  Big up to Canada.

Although Canada is our neighbor to the North, they still qualify as an excellent segue to silly International lacrosse news.  Oh, yeah, you read it right.  The ILF Championships need… a mascot.  On a side note, mascots for events are tacky.  Teams get mascots, events don’t get mascots.  Well, events do get mascots but they always disappoint.  Everyone knows that.  But whatever, it’s not a big deal.

US Men’s Team and Bryant University head coach, Mike Pressler, has done well wherever he has been and neither Bryant nor the Men’s Team seem to be exceptions.  Expectations, as always, are sky-high for the US Team and anything short of gold will be considered a failure by most onlookers.  Pressler selected this team to win the small battles in games and for no other reason.  Players like Schiller, Crotty and Eric Martin illustrate this fact.  If they can play together, this team should dominate in Manchester.  Expectations at Bryant are slightly lower even though the team went 10-5 last year in their first season at the division one level.  Greer is gone but don’t expect the team to drop off too much with Pressler at the helm, although US Team responsibilities could get in the way from time to time.  Expect 2011 to be better.

So Division one lacrosse is growing and it’s also growing in… Tampa.  Weird.  but true.  Actually what’s weird is that this town basically subsists off of a small hotel tax and has basically turned the town into a giant sports complex for kids and teenagers and their sports teams.  They’re selling weather.  That’s kind of amazing.  Work with what you’ve got, I guess.

Upstate New York has talent so they try to make do with that.  The one and only number 22 has found a new back to rest on at Cuse and it seems like a good pick to me.  Jammer gets the 22 and gives up 43, which will now be worn by a relative of Marshall Abrams, who wore 43 while handling the longstick at Cuse.  If you don’t know who Marshall Abrams is then google him and do 100 behind the back wall ball reps as penance.

I keep heading back to box lacrosse.  Maybe it’s because I saw it on SportsCenter’s Top 10 today (Billings scoring top shelf off a btb pass), maybe because in the next Fireside Chat Series, Malcolm Chase, the head coach at the University of Southern Maine extorts its virtues.  By the way, Malcolm will be joining me in Miami for the Bump and Grind next week and the man runs a dirty clinic so hit me up if you have interested players in the South Florida area.  So back to box lacrosse, IL also runs the NLLInsider and its a good intro to the game from sources that understand it.  Worth checking out.

On a closing note, a couple of Congrats go out to Adam Sear of the University of Maryland and the Wembley Lacrosse Club who made Australia’s National Lacrosse Team.  Adam interviewed with LAS earlier in the Fireside Chat Series and had some sticks shown off on LAS as well.  Also a big congrats to Glenn Morley of the Bayswater Lacrosse Club, who provided LAS with a write up and pictures from the Hawai’i Tournament earlier this year.  Old man made the team, good on ya!   Congrats as well to the rest of the Wembley boys and all the guys in WA who made it.  Best of luck in Manchester, you’ll need it!

Drop me a line in the comments or at connor@lacrosseallstars.com