Going into the scrimmage yesterday our focus as a team was to get back to playing with the kind of effort and intensity that all of us have come to expect from a Middlebury team. I was also hoping to see us apply what we have worked on in these first two weeks of practice in a game like situation. I felt pretty good about our effort walking off of the field yesterday and thought we played well but after watching the film last night I couldn’t have asked for a better performance from our guys yesterday.

I’ll be the first to tell the team or anyone that the score doesn’t matter in a scrimmage. It’s why we don’t have the scoreboard on and all we want to concentrate on is getting better each quarter, navigating some game like situations for the first time and learning from it. It’s actually great training for how we want to play in a regular season game, as Erin always said, play like it’s 0-0 and don’t worry about the scoreboard until the last 5 minutes of the game. Having said all of that, after doing the stats last night and keeping score, I was surprised at how dominant we were yesterday.

While we had our “starters” in for the first three quarters, we only gave up 2 goals. Ryan Deane started in goal and played the first half, he finished with 7 saves and 1 goal against. Charles Ward came in for the third quarter and had 5 saves and 1 goal against. Both guys played with tremendous poise clearing the ball and confidence in the cage.

Defensively we weren’t flawless by any means but a few things stood out to me from yesterday. The first was that we were a physical defense and plenty of St. Lawrence players ended up on the ground after a shot. In particular Matt Rayner and Johnny Duvnjak are going to see to it that an opposing attackman knows they’re on the field. Henry Clark and Chris Mejia were solid as well and can both get the ball off the ground and handle the ball with some pressure on them. Our defensive midfielders all ran the field particularly well with Alex Englert generating a few breaks, along with Alex Giammarco and George Curtis doing a nice job in the middle of the field.

On offense we were a much more cohesive bunch compared to a week ago and that should only improve as we get ready for the opener in a few weeks. We came out firing and scored on each of our first four possessions as it was 4-0 before SLU had taken a shot. Andrew Conner and Erich Pfeffer are both #1 options in the midfield for us and it will be interesting to see who opponents decide to put the long stick on this year. AC finished (3,1) yesterday while Pfeff was (1,1). Senior Brooks Toth (Choate/Bronxville, NY) also played well and did a nice job helping the offense run smoothly yesterday. First years Quinn Cronnan (BB&N, MA) and recently convert to midfield Griff McGoldrick (Fairfield Prep, CT) also played well. As I mentioned last week, Griff is 6’5 and can shoot it with either hand, he seems to be very comfortable in the midfield so far and finished with two goals on the day. Quinn finished with a goal and an assist and is physically ready to play at this level on both ends of the field.

At attack we also had some nice production out of a few guys. Dave Hild finished with 4 goals while sophomore Mike Giordano (Ridgewood, NJ) had 4 assists. Mike is a smart lacrosse player with good vision. He is coming back from an injury from our first day of practice but looks like he’s ready to go. As for the other attackmen we played in the first three quarters, Tim Cahill was solid on the crease for us finishing 1,1 and Stew Kerr also picked up a goal on man-up.

Again, while the score doesn’t matter on a day like yesterday, I was surprised to see us up 12-1 at one point in the 3rd quarter and 14-2 after three. To me the most glaring stat of the game for us was our clearing percentage. Last week we were 22 out of 32 (68%) against Union and improved to 23 for 26 (88%) in those first three quarters yesterday. Most good college teams are going to be 75%+ on the year so hopefully we’re on the right track there.

One area where we need to get better is going to be facing off, we were under 50% for those three quarters. Going forward that will certainly be a point of emphasis in practice and we will get better there.

Overall it was a great day for our guys to go against someone in a different uniform and to perform at a higher level than a week ago. We have another important week of practice here and then Hamilton and St. Mike’s coming to town next Saturday for our final tune-ups before the opener.