Harold William HalbertIt’s 4 p.m., on a Monday night and a thunderous growl, along with heavy panting, can be heard on the Dixon Center’s track located above the basketball court. The sound is coming from this season’s Cabrini men’s lacrosse team.
The team starts its practice by attempting to run 15 laps around the track in under 11 minutes. As they pass the starting point of each lap, they call out their lap number and head coach Steve Colfer shoots back their time from the stopwatch he’s staring at.
After completing their run and stretching, Colfer lines-up some cones and the players assemble in three lines to start their drills. About an hour into their practice, they are out of breath from the running and drills, the team breaks quickly for some water before gearing up their equipment and setting up some goals at either end of the basketball court.
Normally they are outside on the field but because of the weather the team has been spending its practices ricocheting lacrosse balls off of the pushed-in wooden bleachers. The players, though visibly tired, push on actively through practice as Colfer and assistant coaches Ryan Greer and Tom Lemieux yell at them, both encouraging and pushing them to work harder.
“Way to go! Way to pick it up!” Greer said, resulting in a couple of the players picking up their pace.
“My vision got really blurry and I didn’t feel right, they said I was dehydrated,” sophomore Eric Serio said while sitting on the sideline with a bottle of water. “I just want to get in and play already.”
Meanwhile, white rubber balls ricochet repeatedly off bleachers as players call out their positions and Colfer switches teams in three-on-three scrimmages between blue and white practice jerseys.
“We’re not ready yet as we still need a lot of work, but I’m confident in the good group of talented guys in the program this year,” Colfer said. This is Colfer’s fourth season as men’s lacrosse head coach. Before that he was its assistant coach for four seasons.
“I think we need to work most on defense before the season,” Serio said. “Two starters graduated and while we’re trying to fill those spots we’re not working perfectly together just yet.”
“We have some good young freshman this year and also two transfer students both from Division I schools that I’m excited to have,” Colfer said. “We have a lot to work on before the opener.”
“Last year our last game ended in a disappointment,” sophomore Matt Grosse said.
“Yeah but we look at it this way, a setback is a setup for a comeback,” senior Jack Heim said.
Posted to the web by Lancaster Philips
