This past weekend, the boys’ varsity Lacrosse team traveled to St. Louis. to play against Desmet Jesuit High School and St. Louis University High School, better known as SLUH. This year, East fell short against Desmet 15-5 and SLUH 15-6.
While the varsity team has never won a game against either of those teams, in the past they have been able to make one of the two games close.
“I thought this year’s team had a pretty good chance to win one of them,” head coach William Garrett said. “So that is a little bit frustrating.”
Garrett and the rest of the varsity team knew about the high-caliber talent of both of these teams before they even stepped foot onto the green turf. Before leaving for St. Louis, they watched game film from previous games against these teams, trying to find holes in their defense and ways to shut down their offense.
“We knew we were playing the best competition you can find in St. Louis, so we knew going into it that it was going to be a tough game,” freshman Griffin Fries said. “We just weren’t able to pull off the win.”
Even though they didn’t win either of the games, Garrett doesn’t see this past weekend as just a loss. Through the two games played, coaches and players were able to identify major issues in both their offense and defense.
“The good news is, issues that we have we now know that we have to fix, and sometimes those issues don’t show up when we have to play against weaker teams in Kansas City,” Garrett said. “So we know exactly what we need to work on and get better at.”
The varsity team came to Monday’s practice ready to pay attention and work hard. Practice focused on fixing their defense. They talked through the importance of communication and coaches even reviewed defensive basics with the team.
“[Monday’s] practice was really productive and we are already looking a lot better,” Garrett said.
The next time the boys will be playing out-of-state competition will be May 1, when they travel to Milwaukee when they will have the opportunity to play against competitive teams from all over the U.S.
“We will have a bunch of games between now and when we leave, so the young guys will get some more experience and confidence on the field,” senior Will Kost said. “Also as a team we will have some more line chemistry as time goes by and hopefully be a machine by the end of the season.”
Garrett isn’t letting these two games change the way he views his team and their skill level. He still has high expectations for his team in their next tournament and throughout the rest of the 2016 season.
“Up to this point in the season, the effort from everyone has been extremely high, the energy’s been high, the commitment’s been high, and I think going forward we are going to learn from our mistakes this weekend,” Garrett said. “[Milwaukee] will be the next big task to see if we have learned anything from St. Louis.”