Atticus wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2019 10:26 am
Dartjd - your post is a head scratcher. You are a lax alum and you live in town, yet, before you come to your conclusion that the coaches are what is “fundamentally wrong” and don’t “coach up” their young players, you ask ANOTHER poster (who appears to live down in the Mid atlantic) his opinion about these purportedly uncoached players? Don’t you go to the games in support of your program? Are you involved with the program living so close? When you speak of scoring machines’ degrading skills over time, are you referring to the BC era?
I had much the same reaction, especially given the decade time frame.
Two different coaching regimes, very different coaches at the helm different corps of assistants.
But sure, we haven't seen too many breakout offensive guys.
Gotta go back to 2010 and earlier, I think, to find any All-Ivy attack men, Ari Sussman and Nick Bonacci, and the Sowell guys (I assume Nick and perhaps Ari were recruited during the Sowell era)
More recently, I'd take 2-way midfielder Jack Korzelius on any team but not a lot of other guys on the O end.
But hey, other than a couple of short stretches, we've seen very few periods where we have bunches of All-Ivy much less All-American players at any position, and only a handful through history as multiyear AA's.
Players help win, but winning also brings the accolades.
When the comment suggests that a high schooler who was 'near spectacular' in HS "degrades" during their tenure in Hanover, I have two potential reactions: 1) were they
really spectacular in HS and, if so, against what competition? And 2) did they stay healthy?
Have we actually recruited multiple top 20 O players who then fizzled? Or have we attracted guys from the 20-100 slot and not had any bloom into the sort of stud that doesn't come along often, anywhere?
I was lucky to play with a couple of guys on the O end who were actually pretty darn good.
Steve O'Neill's brother Mike was one of the all time finest attack men in the history of the sport, another brother a football player for Dartmouth. Steve didn't have his brother Mike's speed, but he was as smart a player was could be, crafty and a terrific feeder. Great background from the Island. He had a great career for us, 2X captain, but never an AA.
I don't know how good Jeff Hickey was in HS, Connecticut ball was not the Island. Hickster and his HS classmate Joe Nastri, were the two main linebackers on a really good Dartmouth football team. Both really big guys. Nastri began as a midfielder for us but then was converted to defense and was our #1 his senior year. Hickey was a phenom. He wasn't that fast, not that amazing of a stick, not especially crafty...but somehow everything he shot went in. It was uncanny. AA his senior year.
Bob Garry, my class of '80, would have started, IMO, for pretty much any team in the nation, also 2X captain. Recruited all over. Tremendous stick, great shooter and feeder from the midfield. He'd captained the champion HS team from the Island. He was our best midfielder his 4 years, scored the winning goal against Cornell, one of 4 that day in an 11-10 huge upset in '79. Fought injuries. Another player in my class, Tom Boltja, had been in the top 2 scorers on the Island the year before he came, an ungodly rate of scoring. First guy I met who threw these crazy fakes we now take for granted. Unfortunately knee injuries ended it for ToBo.
And there were others.
At first we were pretty darn awful. Guys like O'Neill and Garry would make these pinpoint no-look passes and guys wouldn't catch the feeds, never expecting that pass...argghhh.
I'd make outlet passes and hit guys in the stick for a fast break, dropped, fast break coming right back our way again. Navy took 83 shots in my first start, 51 on cage.
We 'won' every fight, though not on the scoreboard.
But we got better overall, as guys started expecting those passes, overall lax IQ increased, stick work improved. Those two classes became the upper classes...and in '79 Bill Ritch joined the coaching staff as associate HC, talked out of retirement.
You need the players. And enough of them to actually win, not just come close.
Otherwise a great feeder hits guys in the stick and they drop it, or they miss the goal or hit the tender in the stomach...
And you need coaches to set expectations high and create a belief that we could actually win.
Do we have all of that right now?
Not enough.
But we battle hard.
