molo wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 10:32 am
I wonder how much better the two Hopkins teams would have been had Quinn started as a freshman and sophomore instead of sitting behind someone who was not as good but who had more seniority? I believe the “relief pitcher” game
was his sophomore year.
On a related note, someone mentioned Les Matthews. When he was a sophomore in high school, our starting goalie—a friend of mine—was senior who had started since his sophomore year. We were doing well, having lost only to Huntington and Hopkins frosh, but Mike Rentko boldly replaced our starting goalie with the tenth grader. The former starter spent the rest of the season on my end of the bench as we went on to win the MSA championship.
I remembered that lesson as a coach: play your best players regardless of grade. Naturally, most of your key players will end up being seniors and juniors, but don’t let tradition allow you to screw underclassmen and, ultimately, the team.
Your point is well-taken.
The "relief pitcher" game was actually in Quinn's freshman year. He came off the bench in a driving rain storm, Hop was down like 6-0 to UMD, and the Jays ended up winning the game and advancing in the playoffs.
Fans screamed for Quinn to play after that, like every game there were chants for Quinn to start. So this wasn't a hindsight 20-20 thing. Everyone knew at the time that Quinn was better. Holman was a very good goalie, he just wasn't in LQ's class. Few are. Anyway, in 1983, Quinn did start a number of games because Holman was injured, but Chic gave him his job back later in the season when he recovered. This is probably the only knock I ever had against Chic who I think was the gold standard of coaches. Anyway, I still believe to this day that LQ would not have given up 17 goals in the 1983 NC game because I don't think he ever gave up more than 10 goals to anyone in regulation. He only had one loss as a starter, to North Carolina down at their place in overtime (11-10, I think?). It was always hard to win down there.
I would list DeTo third behind Greens and Petro, all-time.