As you may have known, we suffered a little bit of a setback last week when we traveled to Syracuse for a match up in the Carrier Dome. Although it is always a tough place to play, we came out flat and were just never able to recover from the deficit. It marked our second loss on the season, putting us at a 5-2 record. The bus ride home was long and quiet, but we couldn’t dwell on the loss because we had Virginia the next weekend at M & T Bank Stadium, the home of the world champion Baltimore Ravens.
While all the students and our friends were laying on the beach somewhere warm for the week of spring break, we were out on Homewood Field working hard to get that next win, and the guys on our team wouldn’t have had it any other way. Monday was a tough practice as everyone knew that we had to work a lot harder if we were going to beat these tough teams that were coming up on our schedule. Also, because we didn’t have anything to worry about except for lacrosse, we decided to split the team into smaller focus-like groups that we did on our own time to try to get that extra work in. An example is that my group got together and put targets in a cage, we then split into teams of two and the most targets hit won. We are all pretty competitive so there were a lot of almost hits that were argued throughout the game. Along with practice, we continued these focus groups throughout the week, along with getting ourselves ready and studying for the UVA game.
Like any other week, scout for the opponent began on Tuesday along with the film and studying of the other team, but practices continued to be positive and fun, while still having a very serious tone. On Friday, we were able to go practice in M & T Bank stadium to prep for our game the following day at 4:30. It’s always fun going into these big time NFL stadiums, especially for the freshmen that were doing so for the first time at Hopkins. This Friday was our normal stick work and walkthrough, along with a little shoot around and fun at the end. The practice finished up, and I was lucky enough to have the chance to leave early to go watch my brother and the Hill Academy high school as they were playing Boys Latin locally. Arrived at the start of the second half and got to witness a great game, although it ended with the Hill Academy losing by 1 to the no. 1 Boys Latin team. The night ended with some Chinese Food that I ordered and before we knew it we were on the bus going through downtown Baltimore to the packed stadium for our game. We watched a little bit of the game before ours from the stands, and then we were on the field. Two and a half hours later we were victorious with a big 15-8 win, and were moving right on to North Carolina on Saturday. Beat the Tar Heels! #greatdaytobeajay
