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Good Morning Laxville, It’s Time for School

Lax in the spring in NYC is hard to beat

I spent the last week on vacation, dropped all responsibilities to the outside world and tried my absolute hardest to relax as hard as possible.  Mission accomplished, and no, I’m not standing on an aircraft carrier.  I got back into the lax state of mind by playing a game on Sunday with the well-dressed Southampton LC in the NYC Ulax league.

I came back to be shocked (and possibly awed) by my boys at Wesleyan losing to Montclair State and then Middlebury.  Hopefully, they’ll right the ship by the end of the season and be a darkhorse to repeat as the NESCAC champions but right now a lot of people think the Cardinals are still just learning to fly.

And just in case you didn’t know, when you stop writing for a whole week, your posts will quickly deteriorate to Rick Reilly-esque levels and you will use awful puns to illustrate points.

I’ll be dyeing up a wand for one of the Westech guys so maybe that will help them find their perpetual groove.

Gabe Kelley is the starting point for Wesleyan coming together.

Cuse has been looking GOOD!  They dominated Johns Hopkins early this weekend and I am continually impressed with the players they bring in.  These aren’t guys that fit into molds, at least not the molds of today, but they are skilled and play the game with a passion other schools struggle to create.  Cody “Jammer” Jamieson, Joel White and Jeremy Thompson are all great examples of this philosophy.

Jammer is slow and only has a left hand yet he’s still one of the best players out there.  He scores goals in ways the rest of us can only imagine and if you aren’t out pressing on him, he will tear your D apart with his passes.  White can handle the rock, stays on O sometimes with a pole and throws takeaway checks without fear.

Thompson can literally do it all: face-offs, man up, D, regular O, clear the ball… whatever you need, Thompson can do it and switch seamlessly from one aspect to the next.  On other teams (like Hopkins) these guys would get reined in and forced into a boring system, at Cuse they are allowed to run free and the Orange reap the benefits.  Plus Thompson has the best hair ever and uses a traddy wand.

Res-Pek to Thompson. Sweet hair, sweet strings. And respek to lax.com for the photo.

Hopkins is still relying on their bore me to death offense and without a couple more studs (Middies John Greeley and John Ranagan are good but not ready to step up and lead), Kimmel will have to bear too much of a load for the Jays to be a real contender.

I thought the thumbing debate was limited to guys like Max Quinzani at Duke (who is a repeat offender) and Billy Bitter at UNC (who I have only seen do it once) but then I find a photo like the one below and have to wonder to myself… does anyone other than me care about thumbing the ball?  If the NCAA is going to widen the heads, then they should care about thumbing too.

When Cornell guys are pushing the line on thumbing, it's an epidemic.

Speaking of interesting photos, check out the pic below from lax.com that demonstrates just how much flex some of these new sticks have.

What's a long time, like 8 days? HOW DO YOU LIVE!?!?

SO far, Virginia and Cuse look like the top dogs in the game with UNC and Maryland coming in at a tight number 3 and 4.  Only Cuse has a loss in this group and that was to UVA on the road by 1.

A team that joins them on top of laxpower’s venerated power ranking (but not the USILA poll) is 6-0 Lafayette out of the Patriot League.  The Leopards have bested a down Navy team, an up Fairfield squad and a pesky Penn team for some good wins.  Their best win was this past weekend over then ranked Bucknell on the road.

With a win over Drexel (6-1, ranked 11th) next weekend at home, Lafayette has a good chance to go undefeated.  By virtue of me saying that, they will now start to lose like crazy.

In MCLA land, our boys at Oregon gave Michigan a HUGE scare when neither 412 nor I thought it was even remotely possible.  Props to the Ducks for a good game but a win is a win and Michigan has so many of them.

Great teams win close games and Michigan wins games whether they’re close or not… I don’t know what that makes them.  Go D1 already.  We’re all waiting for it.

In D3 land, I’m having a hard time pulling the best team out of the Gburg, Stevenson, Salisbury, Denison, Tufts menagerie.  One of them is my top team but I’m really not sure who it is just yet.  I also think Cortland is going to threaten and Middlebury is actually looking pretty good even though the one and only middie Mike Stone graduated.

Dickinson, Ursinus, Conn College, RPI and one or two others are all still undefeated as well so D3 is looking about as interesting as it possibly can.  Parity is here right now.

More laxiness will follow in the coming days but for now I’m off to get my life back in order.  In the meantime, I will leave you with a picture of a baby horse that doesn’t have any hair on its tail or mane.  Why?  Because I saw it on vacation in Puerto Rico and I thought it was cool.

That pony may have alopecia... and I want to go surfing.

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About the Author:
Connor is a pretty average lacrosse player at this point who doesn’t know when to give up on the game.  He played and coached in the NESCAC and still plays for the Southampton LC in NYC.  Connor lives with his fiance in Brooklyn and thanks her for allowing him to keep the dream alive.

Contact him at connor@lacrosseallstars.com.