MAGIC WANDS 14 – F.R.O.G.S. 9 (Florida Really Old Guys)
The Shootout has a lot of lax stuff, and it just seems to be something that sometimes just keeps on going. One Vail Lover once called this Vail lacrosse thing “Eight Days at Eight Thousand Feet”, alluding to the length of the event as well as the 8200’ altitude here in Vail. It still is at the same altitude as it ever was, but it has become more like ten days or more every year, too, so the old shoe no longer fits the metaphorical time slot. Because of the length of the time that lacrosse festivities continually unfurl at the tournament, it has sort of split in two and we have almost two separate doses of activity sprinkled over the entire event. Today the first part of things wrapped up with the Supermasters final game, thus paving the way for the U-19 finals tomorrow. The second tournament wave tsunami, which is the start of the Elite Tournament, begins on Thursday.
WAVE THE MAGIC WANDS
The Supermasters Championship game was played today under the first threatening skies we have seen since we arrived. The clouds to the west were ominous and the game was actually interrupted by lightning in the third quarter. Eventually The Wands won by a fairly convincing 14-9 count. Both of these finalists have been making the annual pilgrimage to compete in the Vail Supermasters since pretty much forever. This is the third championship overall for the Wands and it was the first championship game experience and appearance for the FR.O.G.S. since 2002.
CAN YOU SAY RINGER?
The truth is that these were not your two neat and tidy pushpin-on-the-map spots that would be geographical representations that we tournament Directors would like so much. For us it has always been about bringing the best from ‘your’ geographic region to Vail and sort of a ‘let’s see what you got’ thing happens. This remains our fantasy.
The 2008 winning Wands used to be just that little old team from Texas but the fact is that now they sport players from many of the places along the Forest Gump running path, including Long Island, and as for the Florida Really Old Guys, well, they had a few very special players that looked not very old at all, as in a couple years removed from the MLL, guys that had probably been to Florida on vacation once or twice, but other than that…
I ALWAYS FORGET TO WRITE ABOUT THE GAME!
The game began with the teams trading goals, but early in the second quarter tournament all star attackman Paul Thomas led an offensive barrage with two goals and an assist in a two minute span and the Wands were suddenly ahead by three, forcing the F.R.O.G.S. to play catch up for the rest of the day, and they never quite made it all the way to ‘even’ in spite of the efforts of their tournament all stars, especially midfielders Brian Silcott who posed an offensive threat every time he touched the ball, and Gary Becker, who was getting some good shots but couldn’t find the back of the net as much as he might have liked on this particular afternoon.
LIGHTNING STRIKES
The rhythm of the game was rudely interrupted with 5:42 left in third quarter when Mother Nature brought things to an abrupt halt with some rattling thunder boomers rolling up and down the Valley. It was 8-5 for the Wands when the 40-minute referee mandated weather delay came. As a coach I always am curious to see what kind of affect things like this have on the game.
After the break the F.R.O.G.S. came out with determination and quickly slashed the lead to one at 8-7. It seemed like the ‘game’ was to be on at that point, but that illusion quickly evaporated when all-star face-off middie Rocco Gugliamo dodged a little bit outside and then dumped one inside to David King for a backhanded flourishing finish and the lead was back to two with this emphatic answer to the F.R.O.G. surge. The Wands stretched it to 11-7 not long thereafter and the deal was then really done while it was still early in the final stanza.
IT’S HOW YOU FINISH
Several times in that crucial early fourth quarter the Wands controlled and cleared the ball cleanly, leaving the challengers no easy opportunities to go back to the goal, and then they showed great ball movement in the offensive end of the field, creating golden scoring opportunities as they methodically stole time from the clock and put the game away. Meanwhile on the other end the Wands’ goalie and tournament MVP Chris Mitzel was thwarting the F.R.O.G.S. and their strong efforts to score at almost every turn. The game ended just as Mitsel made a sprawling acrobatic save on a very frustrated F.R.O.G. shooter, a fitting punctuation mark to a ‘winning’ performance by the 2008 Vail Shootout Supermasters champions.
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