Six seniors on the Bates College men’s lacrosse team understand that their conference tournament isn’t life and death. They’ll forever have that perspective and make the distinction after teammate Morgan McDuffee was murdered on a street corner less than a mile from campus three years ago.
Still, becoming the first lower-seeded New England Small College Athletic Conference team to win a league playoff game and advance to the semifinals is a well-deserved reward for captains Peter Friedman and Dan Ross and four other student-athletes who have endured the unthinkable.
Bates (9-5) travels to top-seeded Middlebury (Vt.) at noon Saturday.
“We’re playing the New York Yankees,” said Bates coach Peter Lasagna. “In the 10 years NESCAC schools have been allowed to participate in the NCAAs, Middlebury is the only school to represent us. They’ve won three national championships. But we’ve made history a few times already.”
The Bobcats matched their most wins in a season since 1987 only one year after a deceptive 2-9 campaign.
Four of those nine defeats were a one-goal margin. Bates lost another game by only two tallies.
“We weren’t quite as terrible as 2-9 looked,” Lasagna said.
This season’s mark doesn’t tell the whole story, either. Bates began with eight consecutive wins. Then came a heartbreaking, five-overtime loss to Connecticut College. That 8-7 defeat was the last game before final exams, which are in mid-April at Bates.
Bates faced the league’s top four teams after the lull and came out on the short end against Amherst, Tufts, Bowdoin and Middlebury headed into last Sunday’s NESCAC quarterfinals.
There, the Bobcats erased three weeks of frustration in stunning fashion, eliminating arch-rival Bowdoin on the road, 6-5, when the Polar Bears scored an own-goal just six seconds into overtime.
“I didn’t know we were the first (lower-seeded team to win a NESCAC quarterfinal) until Erin Quinn, the Middlebury coach, told me on Monday,” Lasagna said. “I guess I’m glad we didn’t know that going in, or we might have convinced ourselves it was impossible.”
Defense delivered the watershed win. Bates held Bowdoin scoreless in the third period, and Friedman converted a feed from Ross for the tying goal.
The teams exchanged goals in the fourth quarter before Bowdoin won the fateful faceoff to begin the extra session and made the errant pass that found an empty cage.
Bates junior Paul Kazarian was brilliant at the other end. He made nine saves in the first quarter, alone, and 16 in all.
“We have a great goalie who is playing out of his mind right now,” Lasagna said. “It takes a very different person to play goalie in lacrosse, a person that chooses to put himself in front of a speeding object.”
Kazarian is sure to see the white blur plenty of times on Saturday. Middlebury is 12-1, the third best winning percentage in NCAA Division III, and the Panthers beat Bates 17-10 the day before the Bobcats’ playoff triumph at Bowdoin.
Lasagna knows a half-dozen other teams would love to have the same opportunity. He’s also sure the Bobcats have been through enough together that fear is now a foreign concept.
“For Peter and Dan, being captain of Bates lacrosse means a lot to them,” Lasagna said. “They’re the last group to play lacrosse with Morgan. They began preparing themselves for this last summer.”
A storm for all seasons
The University of New England Nor’easters have honored freshman Katie Morin of Lewiston as their Female Rookie Athlete of the Year. Morin played on UNE’s basketball and softball teams.
In softball, Morin was Commonwealth Coast Conference Rookie of the Year, leading UNE with a .386 batting average. Her 32 hits, 15 runs and six extra-base hits also topped the team, and she was named a second team all-conference at shortstop.
Morin was second on her basketball squad in scoring and rebounding and led the Nor’easters with 50 steals.
First-year ace strikes again
University of Southern Maine freshman Mike Burke of Lewiston has been named Little East Conference Rookie of the Week for the second time.
Burke won twice to help the Huskies wrap up an undefeated Little East Conferenbce regular season at Western Connecticut State. He dispatched Colin Robertson in singles, 6-3, 6-2, before joining Jason Ouellette in a 9-7 doubles win over Colin and Forest Robertson.
Overall, Burke is 12-5, including a 7-2 doubles record with Ouellette. USM begins play in the LEC championship meet today at Danbury, Conn.
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