Coming off a 7-5 record last season, the boys’ varsity lacrosse team and coach Ralph Bernardo are looking to start this season off with more than a few wins.

They are returning a large majority of the team from last year, besides former captains and 2022 graduates Ian Smith and Nate Jacobs. This will be a big blow for the boys, not only on the field but off of it as well. The team votes on captains each year so they can find the best leaders that will motivate the team. Seniors Alec Fleischer, Mason Berk and Zach Haledjian were selected this year. They have big shoes to fill, but the team is more than confident in them to step up to the task.

The boys had three preseason scrimmages against Einstein, Springbrook and Rockville to make sure everything is clicking before the regular season begins. The first scrimmage was against Einstein, and the boys started off firing on all cylinders. They had a 6-0 lead going after one quarter, thanks to the play of Fleischer. He recorded five goals in limited playing time and had several nice passes. During the first half, the returning seniors played a majority of the minutes, and seemed to have fantastic chemistry out on the field.

Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the juniors, who played in the second half. For most of them, this was their first game on varsity, and it clearly showed. They lacked the chemistry, competitiveness and physicality of the seniors. Junior Zo Singh made a couple of costly mistakes down the stretch. Junior Daniel Son said, “Zo did drop a few passes, but he still laid a kid out. We definitely need to keep improving, or else the seniors will play a bulk of the minutes during the season.”

Bernardo challenged the team going into the Springbrook scrimmage, saying that they cannot finish games as poorly as they did against Einstein. The boys answered the bell and came out with a dominant win over Springbrook. Senior Ethan Kuan was proud of the way the team responded against Springbrook, and said “I think the Einstein scrimmage was a great opportunity because it humbled us and taught us that we can’t go into games thinking we will win.”
The last scrimmage was against Rockville, a team that has not been successful as of late. The boys came in with the right mindset, ready to handle business, and they got the job done. Captains Berk and Haledjian each had outstanding performances. “Hopefully we can take these types of performances into the regular season. We have some big division games early in the season, and we need to be ready,” Haldejian said.

The first game of the regular season is today against the Clarksburg Coyotes. The boys beat the Coyotes last year 15-2, so they are expecting to start the season off 1-0.