In addition to bonding as a team, “fall ball” allows the team to bond and get a taste of what the spring season will be like,” senior Jared Protaski said.
“They’re more like exhibition games, so it’s a good chance for us to get to flow as a team, and get the bugs out,” Protaski said.
The early games also allow the many freshman to get a feel for what college-level lacrosse is like.
“We tried to give the freshmen a chance to go in and play and get them acclimated with the style of college lacrosse,” senior Chris Briody said. “Even the kids who had never played before and were interested in lacrosse, we’ve only had a couple of practices so they didn’t really have a chance to see what it’s like until now. As it is with any sport, to get a chance to get out there and play is much easier to teach someone then in practice.”
In what turned out to be the most exciting match of the tournament, Marquette faced off with the Milwaukee Lacrosse Club, whose members’ ages range in the upper twenties and lower thirties. Marquette won the match 6-5 in a sudden-death overtime thriller, a big one for Marquette over a very tough — and older — Milwaukee Lacrosse Club team.
In Marquette’s other match, the Golden Eagles were able to defeat Wisconsin-Whitewater, 3-1, giving Marquette two big wins in the tournament. Briody maintained that the maturity of the freshman class helped over the weekend and gave the team an optimistic future for this year as well as the next couple of years.
“We have a lot of freshman this year, more than in years past, and they have a lot more experience then we’ve ever had,” Briody said. “So it’s realy nice to see after graduating eight to 10 seniors we have a really nice class coming in. It looks promising for the team not only now but for the next two or three years. We only have two seniors that I know are graduating so it looks like the team is going to be strong for awhile.”
In the tournament’s remaining contest, the Milwaukee Lacrosse Club team easily handled UW-Whitewater, beating the team, 6-2.
The Lacrosse team won’t see its next action until the end of September.