Interesting; thanks for posting the article. Couple of things:Can Opener wrote: ↑Fri Aug 19, 2022 8:47 amApologies if Seacoaster has already pointed this out, but Becca Block is a NH lacrosse player and ISL alum (Gov’s). There is a nice profile on the four Block women and their contributions to lacrosse in this profile:
https://www.thegovernorsacademy.org/new ... a-block-09
It’s a testament to the growth of NH lacrosse that two members of the US team have Granite State roots. Arsenault is the other. Congrats to SC who has played a role in that growth.
Back in the day, when they were still at Syracuse, I used to see the Blocks running in Stratham and Exeter during the summers, when they were home. They grew up, I think, in Stratham, which is kind of next door to Portsmouth and is part of the Exeter area school district. So they would have played their youth lacrosse in the Exeter area lacrosse entrant to NHYLA, the NH Youth Lacrosse Association. I coached boys and girls youth lacrosse for the Portsmouth NHYLA team, "Seacoast Lacrosse," which encompassed Portsmouth, Rye, Greenland and Newington (like our school district does).
The article is wrong, I think, when it says the Blocks played for "Seacoast Lacrosse in Portsmouth;" they probably played for Seacoast United Lacrosse in Hampton, an offshoot of the well known and pretty successful soccer academy called Seacoast United Soccer Club, which offered lacrosse for a few years until it fizzled out. But I never saw the Blocks play youth or high school lacrosse. When I coached Portsmouth High School girls, we didn't play any of the ISL teams (and would have had a rough time of it, methinks, if we did).
Dempsey played at the New Hampton School (I think her dad is the AD there), which had a very good prep team in her day, playing the likes of St. Paul's and other very good prep teams. I know that Arsenault played summer ball for Granite State Elite. A kid I coached in youth lax was on a GSE team with Arsenault and another kid (who also went to the New Hampton School), who had been recruited to UNC and got all the attention. The mom of the the kid I knew -- who played Division 1 soccer herself -- pointed Arsenault out to me at a tournament in Amherst one weekend and said, "she's the one to watch; kid just doesn't have any idea how good an athlete she is." Dempsey went to BC, played defense her first year and then midfield thereafter, started almost every game, if not every game. The UNC recruit went to UNC, had some injury problems and never saw the field.