Carson's Week in Review: SPRING BREAK!

 Howdy everyone! 

This weeks post is all about spring break, which was last week. And my spring break was all about lacrosse! We started our spring break here at home, playing a game against Centre College from Kentucky on Saturday. This is a team we've only played once before, back in 2020 where we beat them in overtime at their home field the week before the breakout of the pandemic that sent us home. It was great to play them again because they had a bunch of excuses as to why we beat them the last time we played and I have a former high school teammate that plays for them so it was great to see and get to talk with him and his dad after the game for the first time in a few years. We played a pretty good game and were able to defend home turf with a solid win, 14-9. 

    After this game we spent the next two days practicing at home and preparing for our road trip out to the east coast to play two top ranked teams, Salisbury in Maryland and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. These games were going to be difficult but we believe that our program is on a trajectory to be competitive in the near future and the only way to compare ourselves to them and find out what we need to do to get to that level is to play against them. We traveled out to Maryland on Tuesday morning and finally arrived around 9pm. We rested up in the hotel and got ready and rested up for our game on Wednesday. 

    Arriving at the stadium of the #1 ranked team in the country was an amazing experience because up until this point, it was something I had only ever dreamed of. But after we got off the bus and headed into the locker room, it was time to flip that mental switch and get ready for our game like it was any other. I think our team handled the excitement and adversity well, but we quickly learned why they are considered to be the best team in the country. Our guys played with lots of energy and played extremely hard, but in the end, Salisbury was just the better team that day and beat us pretty handily. Although it was cool to play against them, I was glad that our team wasn't content to just be there and have that cool experience. We learned what it would take for us to reach the heights that Salisbury has achieved, but knew it was possible for us, they're just another team of college lacrosse players after all, not super humans.

    Following that game, we headed over to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where we spent the first day with a tour of the civil war battlefield at Gettysburg. A story for another time, but it was extremely interesting and humbling at the same time. We followed that historic tour up with a nighttime haunted tour walk of the city of Gettysburg, which was interesting in its own fashion and kind of spooky as well.    

    The next morning, it was our game day. We spent an hour walking around and reflecting at the Gettysburg National Cemetery. This allowed our men to reflect upon the sacrifices that have taken place for us to have this ability to enjoy our lives and play a game that we love. Following this time of self-reflection, it was game time. We went over to Gettysburg College, the #10 team in the country, and got ready to play. Unfortunately, we lacked some of that energy and effort from our game against Salisbury and went down early in this one, a deficit we were never able to overcome, unfortunately. We took another hard loss, this time by 11 goals, however this one left a bad taste in our mouth. We believed this was a game that should not have been decided by that large of a margin, one that we could have even won. Unfortunately, we just made too many errors and didn't play our best game of lacrosse and we had to take lessons away from this game in a different mindset. 

    Following the loss to Gettysburg, we headed over to Pittsburgh where we spent the night with the plan to visit the 9/11 memorial for Flight 93 in the morning before heading back to Ada. Unfortunately, mother nature decided that wasn't going to happen as we got hit by a decent snow storm that forced the memorial to close for the day and we were forced to skip that and head for home.

    Now that this trip is over and I have officially taken my last spring break trip as a college student-athlete, I took some time to reflect on the games and experiences for the week and thought about how I could help our team reach new heights for the remainder of our season. We still have our goals set, to win the OAC tournament and make it to the NCAA tournament for the first time ever. Thankfully, I don't think we've played our best lacrosse yet, and I believe this team is destine for greatness and will reach heights that have never been reached before. 

    Thanks for taking the time to read through what was an incredible spring break trip! Although a couple of the games didn't go as planned, I believe we grew as a team and we are close to being ready to start our conference play next week!

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