Grow the Game®

Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on linkedin
Share on reddit
Share on whatsapp

My Last Summer Living The Dream

Editor’s note: livin’ ain’t easy but livin’ the lax life? That’s downright tough.  Playing lacrosse extends beyond the playing field and into the real world. The following was written by new writer Will D. aka “Maximizing Prophet.”

Whats good lax world? Maximizing Profit here to give you the dig on this senior from Oregon’s last summer before real life hits him in the face like LaGarrett Blount. To preface the summer I must explain the end of the spring and my last game as an Oregon Duck. As a controversial (lol) at large member in the MCLA National tournament, we, the Ducks, tried to muster everything we could for our matchup against #2 BYU, and got routed. We played hard but were just out of gas by the end of such an emotional season.

After a couple of nights of solid reflection, celebration of a solid four years, and debating whether or not to play in the consolation game, fellow seniors Jon Matusfiesky and Cole Magnuson decided to lead the Ducks to our final game as captains. As poetic justice for playing nearly eight years of serious-injury-free lacrosse, my right hand was shattered by a Texas LSM within the first five minutes. After staring at my mangled hand during the 45 minute drive to the hospital (my mom drove the wrong way for 20 mins) and four hours in the ER, I got splinted and eventually casted for what became the last summer living the dream.

img 1
Broken hand

The first thing I learned being a near-grad is that no one in a college town is looking to hire a moderately qualified near graduate, so I ended up snagging a job as a telemarketer thanks to craigslist. To inquiring lax minds, being a telemarketer is as cool as you think being a telemarketer would be. Had to take a lax break and work the Lorne Smith Camp for a week in July. Big shout out to Lorne Smith for putting on a great camp, and to Kelly Caleb for being an outstanding trainer and taking some great lax pics!

B Whyte and Will D optimizing Division 2 development.
B Whyte and Will D optimizing Division 2 development.

Lorne Smith is always one of the best weeks of the summer, if you get a chance to be a camper or counselor there take it. My first summer of ’08 I easily took WHITE SQUALL to the D1 championship, and was thus promoted this year to leader of Division 2, the highest authority of the high school underclassmen. D2 was won by the legendary ‘Dutch Rudders’ coached by Darrin Loesher and Justin Eckenroad slightly edging the Flawless Techniques led by Brett Whyte and Pat Rodgers.

Some sick nick-names from D2: Sabronis, Bilbro Baggins, Flowtorious B.R.O, Flowtron, Flowstradamus. An awesome group of guys and campers, all week we played smooth, chill lacrosse until the very last day, when the parents come watch before they pick their kids up, of course out of no where these kids start getting chippy the championship game! After cross checks and screaming at the ref (me) arguing style points, I had to bring the whole D2 crew the the face off X and had a little talk that smoothed the rest of the game and ended the camp on the high note we were on all week.

A couple weeks later my Uncle Roberts invites me and the gf Ashley to go boating with his family at Lake Billy Chinook. Had a chill day of tubing and boarding in the middle of central Oregon, had some hot dogs at the Uncle’s cabin, and then on the way back a beautiful day of blue skys and 90 degrees turned into a downpour and intense lighting right above our car. You can check the video out I shot with my Powershot while I was driving, its long and I don’t know how to edit but check out some of the bolts at 00:12, 00:18, 00:27, 00:44, 1:02, 1:18, 2:05, 3:18, the last two are the best as we’re driving from the lake towards the middle of all the lighting action, feel free to skip through me squealing like a girl and dropping the d and s bomb a couple times.

RAFTING
Boating at Lake Billy Chinook
After the storm.
After the storm

The next weekend I find out my mom and Bob are staying at a house at a house on the Oregon Coast at Depoe Bay, and I’m invited to piggy back another mini vacation. Taking advantage of the rare opportunity to surf under blue skies, Bob’s son Andy and I decide to try surfing for our first time. Little did we know the beach we were about to surf had some pretty awful conditions. The waves were plenty big, dwarfing me at 6’2 when they’re hitting me in the face, but the beach had a huge dropoff about ten feet offshore. This perfect scenario sent me and Andy walking into walls of waves before you got your thighs wet.

So this noob is getting tossed around in the Pacific like a cat in a dryer, about half an hour in while walking out to get throttled once again, a giant wave approaches and I turn my back to brace my face from another sea salt b**** slap. This wave knocks the board out of my hands and spins me around momentarily, as I gather my vision I see a second giant wave about to crash on top of me, this wave spins me around and rifles my board right into the back of my head. This puncture was worthy of six staples to my scalp, but before treatment I insisted to my understandably concerned mother who was watching, that, ‘I’d be alright, the sea water will wash it out, and I didn’t even really feel it

I always got flow on top of my head.
I always got flow on top of my head

The board knocked some dumb in me as I stumbled back out into the Ocean trying  to conquer these massive waves until my will had be bashed down retiring. After six hours in the Lincoln City ER, and 45 seconds in front of a staple gun, I was stitched and hit the hay to head back to the Eug the next day. To my surprise, a 12.5 foot 400 pound Great White was hauled into a crab boat no more than two miles from where I was surfing, two days after my bleeding head was being bounced around the water.

Pretty dumb I know, but cool story right?

Here’s that darn shark… massive!

So the tail end of my summer is where the lax got heavy. Commish-ing the Eugene Summer League Championship and shaking the hands of the victors was a highlight of my August, big ups to CL41 dropping 9 G’s in the final game. During the tail end of the summer I decided to paint my mom’s seafoam green house to a dark soothing gray but halfway through my paint job, I took the last weekend in August to join Bigfoot in our Canadian invasion of Victoria’s summer lax tourney. Having an expired passport I was a little nervous crossing the border but luckily had not problem getting into Canada. The roster was studded with Duck laxers and alums along with some Oregon High School studs from the ’05 era.

5 generations of Oregon Lacrosse, #1 seed for ever!
5 generations of Oregon Lacrosse, #1 seed for ever!

Bigfoot cruised to a 4-0 record with stellar play and moderate dehydrating, despite being enemy #1 in the eyes of our brothers to the north as we were called out by several fans and other teams for unnecessary celebrating during a 12 goal run to come back from 0-4 start. We drove 8 hours to get there and it was a beer league, come on. Our undefeated round robin play netted us the #1 seed that we probably celebrated a little too hard at the Sticky Wicket that night, getting smoked in our 10am semifinal game the next morning, 16-4 or something. We soaked in the international weekend, watching the championship game as the sun began to descend I was pretty anxious about an econ midterm I had the next day at noon, in another country with an expired passport, about a 10 hour drive and ferry ride away. After demonstrating my superior Pacific Coast knowledge to my teammates on the ferry, my car zipped down to Eugene, arriving in Eugene a little after 4 am.

As you can guess very little studying went down over the lax weekend and I was severely under prepared for the midterm of my second to last class before I graduated. I scored a dismal 47% and forced myself to study full time for the last two weeks of class to pull a C+ and close out the last of the summer. It was painful and it was eventful but it definitely was worth bangs and bruises for the memories of my last summer living the dream.

Have a story from your own life as a typical lax bro? Want to be a featured guest writer on the most influential lacrosse media empire on the planet? You bet you do.  Send an email to info@lacrosseallstars.com or use our handy CONTACT form. We’ll be talking to you soon.