With the chance of snow in the forcast for this past weekend we ended up moving our Keene State scrimmage from Saturday to Sunday afternoon.  It turned out to be a good decision as we were treated to sunny and almost balmy conditions for this time of year as the temperature was above 30 degrees for most of the afternoon.

After our scrimmage with Keene last year and seeing how well they finished up with their season we figured this would be a good final tune up before Bates this weekend.  As it turned out, both teams threw the ball away quite a bit during the first half and Keene had a hard time staying onsides against us.  Because of all the penalties and poor passing it was hard to get into a rythym in the first half for either team. 

Defensively we have still not had a practice where our top 4 close defensemen and top lsm have been participating but there were stretches in the scrimmage when we were finally able to get them on the field together and we looked solid.  With injuries to Dave Campbell and Frank Granara we were able to try out a few new guys at short stick defensive midfield, expect to see sophomores Russell Banker and Zack Harwood get some time at that position this year.  Zack actually got us on the board with a nice left handed shot in transition that he stuck in the upper right hand corner. 

In the midfield the guy who continues to stand out is Mike Stone who is running by short sticks as if they're standing still.  Bart Witmer had two goals in the midfield for us and has been making great decisions with the ball.  Finally, Jim Cabrera had three goals and started burying some shots in the second half. 

We're going to have our hands full this weekend up at Bates.   The last time we played up there we escaped with a one goal victory in a game that they had all but wrapped up in the 4th quarter with an 8-4 lead with 8 minutes to go.  They return one of the best middies in the league and a few excellent attackmen.  It's going to be another exciting year in the NESCAC, hopefully we'll get off to a great start!