Lacrosse team taking growing pains in stride

5/1/08

By Andrew R. Koch
Sports Editor

The Lyndon State lacrosse team had its share of frustrations as it wrapped up its inaugural season this week. That frustration was clearly shown in a very chippy 23-15 loss at home to Johnson State on Monday.

Despite winning only one game all year, junior captain Craig Salvagno sees a lot of promise and opportunity to grow the sport here at LSC.

“I think we’ll be seeing a lot of kids come in for lacrosse in the future,” Salvagno said, now that the team will be able to recruit students. He does admit however that lacrosse is not a big, popular sport in this area.

On a team of nearly two dozen players, Salvagno is one of only seven players who have experience playing lacrosse prior to coming to Lyndon State. He has been playing since he was in 6th grade. Salvagno says that leading a team which doesn’t have that much experience in the sport has been a lot more fun than some people might think.

“It’s new, it’s sometimes frustrating, but it’s mostly fun. It’s fun expanding a program,” Salvagno said, adding that trying a new sport can be part of the college experience. “It’s about trying new things in college.”

Salvagno, along with head coach Tim Tierney, essentially had to start from scratch when the team first started practicing. They had to teach the players, especially those who are just now learning the sport, the basic skills that are keys to playing the game the right way. In lacrosse, these skills include catching the ball in the webbing, shooting, and passing, along with the proper ways to play on both offense and defense.

“From there we moved on to putting everything into game mode. We learned a lot by playing our first couple of games,” Salvagno said.

Now that they’ve played a full season together, Salvagno likes what he sees as the team gelled throughout the year. Even though he’s the captain, he says there really aren’t any particular players that the team needs to rely on for scoring.

“We’ve been playing more like a team lately. Everyone has stepped up as a group, we’re relying on each other,” Salvagno said. He added that everyone has spoken up when they’ve felt the need to and contributed their thoughts, both in practice and in the huddles during games.

Tierney has only seen positives from his team this year, despite the frustration of losing their last nine games. Of those losses, there are a couple of games that Tierney thinks the team could’ve won.

“We could’ve beat St. Joseph’s (ME.). We almost beat Mitchell, but that was our first game ever. The team we have now would definitely beat Mitchell,” Tierney said.

Even though he’s the coach of a first-year team, Tierney says that this first year is the ultimate building year for the team because the expectations aren’t that high.

“It’s not hard. You just have to keep everything in perspective…The expectations are just to be able to field a team,” Tierney said.

Like Salvagno, Tierney sees a bright future for lacrosse on this campus. He expects to see a number of good players coming to play here in the near future.

“The word’s out about lacrosse here at LSC. Lacrosse is immensely popular in New Hampshire, in Maine, in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, in the surrounding states. We’re going to see an influx of experienced high school players,” Tierney said.

“Combined with this inaugural team, we’ll be very competitive. This year’s team set the tone for intensity.”

Even with all the losses, Tierney liked how his players never gave up during each game, no matter what the score was. Lacrosse fans on campus can only hope that this attitude can become a trademark of the program.