Video by Brian Nestel
Cabrini’s 2017 made history with their latest victory, a dominant showing over the Rosemont Ravens. The Blue and white recorded their record-tying 102nd consecutive Colonial States Athletic Conference (CSAC) win under head coach Steve Colfer. With the 20-1 conference-opening win at Edith Robb Dixon Field, Tuesday, Mar. 21, the Cavaliers improved to 5-2 overall on the season. The Ravens on the other hand, are now 2-5 on the season.
“You start something, you have no idea what you’re doing. I think when we started the conference there was 4 teams in 2001,” coach Colfer said on his legacy here at Cabrini. “And then it kept growing and growing, so you’re just trynna win the next game and that’s what we tell our kids. The most important game of our season is the next game, regardless of who you’re playing. I think that’s always been our approach and you really have no sense of the record when you’re in the middle of it, or any of that, you really don’t… Our expectation was, win or lose was to get ready for that next game, and I think that’s always been the approach, and that’s our message in recruiting. So I think that approach is one of the reasons why we’re here today and able to talk about that. We’ve never looked too far down the road, and I think when you start doing that as a team, or as a coach then you miss a step and that’s when you lose that game.
Coach Colfer is the most winningest coach in Cabrini’s history, with a record of 228-63 in 16 seasons as head coach of Cabrini’s men’s lacrosse team, all ending with undefeated records in conference play and CSAC championships.
“This is a record that the kids who were on the 01’ team, 2001, own as much of a piece as the kids who were on the field today and everyone in-between. That’s obviously kind of special, it connects those groups throughout the years and they can all kind of share that,” Colfer said.
As far as the game, Cabrini was able to jump out to an early lead and never look back. Freshman attacker Tyler Kostack scored the first goal of he game for Cabrini at the 9:32 mark of the first period. The Cavaliers were able to build a 6-0 lead by the end off the first period.
“He (coach Colfer) wasn’t too happy with how we started, we started a little slow. We were slacking on the defense, and he wanted us to pick up the pressure because we were kind of letting them do whatever they want. He wanted us to dictate the game a little better,” senior midfielder and captain Evan Downey said.
There were 11 different Cavalier players that were able to score in the game, five of them multiple times. Junior face-off Zack Gregory, sophomore attacker Bill Morgan, senior attacker Ryan Hannan, and Kostack each were able to record hat tricks. In the game, the Cavaliers were able to set game highs for points (33), assists (20), shots (67), shots on goal (43), and ground-balls (46) so far this season.
“Yeah we’ve had all these wins and consecutive championships, but we still have to come out here and get better each day,” Downey said. “We run a 10 man zone, so off of a save or a ground-ball we lost, we made sure that they had trouble getting in, and we basically limited there time of attack.”
Moving forward, Cabrini will face Suny Cortland Mar. 25, Saturday at 2 p.m, at Edith Robb Dixon Field.
“Our defense is young and we always need to do better there. We need to pressure the ball a lot more and not give up so many free shots, and offensively we just have to work on the chemistry'” Downey said.
“The one thing this year where we gotta get better is that we’ve got guys in & out of the lineup with injuries and so you look at the score today and you say you have plenty of guys that scored, but when everyone is not getting a chance to practice, evolve and develop together, and guys are just coming back to play games, that kind of can slow your progression down of where you wanna be by the end of the year. The biggest thing is that we want to continue to get healthy so we can practice everyone together and develop a better sense of continuity on both sides of the ball,” Colfer said.
