With the season half over, spring weather—playing weather—is finally here. Trees and flowers are in bloom and spring sports are in full swing. For most of the country that means it’s time to watch baseball, both on TV and at the local high schools and Little League fields. Yet along the East Coast, particularly, another sport has been rapidly gaining popularity: lacrosse, America’s first sport. And while Major League Lacrosse won’t be challenging Major League Baseball’s ratings any time in the foreseeable future, on a local level the sport has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade. One program in particular which truly demonstrates the rise of lacrosse is Ledyard High School’s.
Now in its eighth season competing in the ECC, the Ledyard lacrosse program has gone from a fun activity for kids who had no interest in baseball or track and field to a team that is respected as one of the contenders in the ECC. Taking over the reins from the program’s creator, Gary Weller, second-year head coach Brian Martin has the Ledyard squad poised to make a splash in the ECC championship tournament for the second straight year.
“I think there has been a lot of improvement this year,” Martin said. “The year before I came here they had missed the ECC tournament by a coin toss, but they were right on the brink of making it. Then we had a very successful season last year, we made the ECC tournament as a three seed, beat Stonington and made it to the championship game, and then went on to the state tournament. This year we expected to try and accomplish the same if not a bit more.”
A Ledyard native, Martin began his lacrosse career playing youth lacrosse for the Mystic SEALS and has been involved in the sport ever since. Playing for two years at St. Bernard High School, Martin went on to play for three seasons at Assumption College in Worcester, Mass. Upon graduating he was offered the head coaching job at Ledyard High, taking over for Weller, the father of one of his good friends.
Entering his first season in 2007, Martin took control of a club which had some success in the past but had only posted a 5-7 record the previous year. As an athlete coaching for the first time and fresh out of a collegiate lacrosse program, Martin had a good sense of what he wanted to do to improve the program. The biggest challenge he said, was to bring the same sense of discipline he had experienced at Assumption to Ledyard.
“I tried to implement a lot of what I had learned [playing lacrosse at the collegiate level] and tried to get these kids to buy into the system and not play like individuals but more as a team,” Martin explained. “Right around the end of the year last year we really started buying into that and playing like a team and that really helped us last year, and that’s something that we’re still trying to get back to with this young team.”
Following a successful debut year, Martin said expectations were a bit up in the air at first, as the team faced an immediate challenge: replacing the loss of their top two scorers in 2007 who had graduated. Yet with 20 returning players including nine seniors, the squad had still set some high expectations. And as the season began, it was clear to Martin that the team would continue to be highly competitive. With a stout defense led by quad-captains Kevin Schwenk, Julian Hightower, Tyler Pollard, and Tim McNeil, the team found their feet early, going 3-1 in the first quarter of the season, and finding offense in the form of Ryan Foster, Troy Powell, and Chase Philpot, their three leading scorers.
Now with more than half the season over, the team is poised to accomplish some if not all of its goals. Sitting at 6-3 with only seven games remaining, Ledyard has already qualified for the state tournament and is in position to tie, if not exceed, the school’s best record ever of 9-4, which was set in 2004. A recent loss to East Lyme, a perennial powerhouse, could have possibly spoiled their chances at the ECC regular season title, but as Martin explained, the season is far from over.
“Going into the season we wanted to try and make a run at the ECC regular season title and by losing to East Lyme it’s going to be difficult,” Martin said. “We’re going to need NFA to knock off East Lyme and we’re going to have to beat NFA in order to get a tie in there. But you could say that it might still be done. But one of our other goals is to win the ECC tournament championship. Right now we’re not guaranteed to be in the tournament but even if we lost to NFA and beat everyone else on our schedule we’d be the number-three seed and right there in the tournament. It’s not a guarantee but the way we’re playing we should be able to get in…That’s one of our immediate goals that we’ll be focusing on now.”
With games against Morgan, Wheeler, and Waterford before a critical showdown with Norwich Free Academy, Ledyard has a chance to enter the matchup at 9-3 and in position to move up the rankings of the ECC. Yet as Martin described, one of Ledyard’s great strengths is also a bit of a weakness: their youth.
Three years after Ledyard High formed their lacrosse team, the Ledyard Youth Lacrosse Association was created, both as an avenue for children who wanted to get involved before the high school level and as a developing ground for the high school level. The youth league quickly developed into a successful and popular program, and now the high school team is truly beginning to feel the effects as the underclassmen entering the program already have the basic skills and knowledge of the game they need to develop quickly into solid players. In fact four of the 10 varsity starters are underclassmen: three sophomores and one freshman. Being able to field such talent is undeniably an asset to the team, yet when such a young squad faces up with a more veteran and playoff tested group, the results are highly unpredictable.
“I think it’s enormous [the contributions of the youth league],” Martin said. “If you look at East Lyme and teams like that, they’ve been benefiting from their youth league for a long time. The younger these guys get started and pick up a stick and get out there and play, the better off they’re going to be as individual players. And the more they play as a team it benefits the program greatly and that’s what we’re seeing now. We’re a very young team because a lot of the young kids, the freshmen and sophomores are good enough athletes and lacrosse players that they can play on the varsity level. They come up with the skill level and an understanding of the game. The youth coaches do a great job of giving the young kids a good basis and a good core of the game. The youth league definitely deserves a good amount of credit to where our high school program is now.”
So with a core group of seniors and a talented bunch of underclassmen, the Ledyard High lacrosse team is prepared to settle in for the home stretch of the season, one that could see it achieve its highest level of success. With their goals lofty and confidence high, Martin said this team is still focused on winning one game at a time.
“We have a ways to go, but right now we’re not at full-season form just yet...at this point it’s just about winning games and trying to improve our seed,” Martin said. “It would be great to get a home game and host someone on our field but we just need to keep winning and hopefully get to the ECC finals and make that a competitive game and go on from there, because once you get into the state tournament there’s really no cupcakes anymore, you’re playing against good teams. And at that point it’s win or go home.”