It’s taking shape
Calvert Hall’s Cager has rehabbed ankle, is eager for his chance to impress pro scouts
Few could match Lawrence Cager’s athleticism at Calvert Hall.
As a freshman, the Forest Park resident earned a spot on the junior varsity squad in soccer but chose football on the advice of upperclassmen such as wide receiver/ cornerback Trevor Williams (Penn State, Philadelphia Eagles) and strong safety Adrian Amos (Penn State, Green Bay Packers). As a sophomore, he made the varsity teams in football, basketball and baseball. As a junior, he replaced basketball and baseball with indoor and outdoor track and field, setting the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association indoor record in the high jump in 2014.
Donald Davis, who coached Cager in football and track and field, marveled at his versatility.
“He’s a kid that could do everything,” Davis recalled. “I thought he was just a tremendous athlete — gifted in a lot of different ways.”
While some athletes might have balked at the seemingly endless rigor of games, meets and practices, Cager craved it.
“It was a blessing, and it really just helped me with every sport because I was always in shape,” he said. “A lot of the sports integrated with each other, and a lot of the fundamentals boiled down to hand-eye coordination.
“In baseball, I was a center fielder and was tracking fly balls every day. So going to catch a go ball in football was so easy for mebecause it was like a routine fly ball. … A season ended, and it was, boom, time to go to baseball or to basketball or to track. “I liked it. It kept me busy.”
Cager eventually whittled his focus to one sport, and he is on the cusp of turning a childhood fantasy into reality. The 6foot-5, 220-pound wide receiver is proj
body shape — it’s really hard.
“This is a great group of guys that we’ve got this year. We have a lot of new and young talent. It’s just hard with this whole coronavirus thing and not being able to play this season.”
For years, Baltimore City public schools have been looked at as a “lacrosse desert.” Programs have been underfunded, uniforms tattered and torn, padding and sticks worn down. Backing from booster programs is nowhere near what one sees in surrounding counties.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t beacons of hope.
City coach Anthony “Merc” Ryan’s Blax Lax program has risen in the city for training the new wave of lacrosse players. Ryan coached City to a 12-2 record last season, winning the Baltimore City boys lacrosse championship and reaching the 3A quarterfinals.
Cummings was preparing for his fourth year as a starter on defense for City. Last year he was a key piece for a group that outscored opponents 147-64.
In nine of the team’s 12 contests, the defense held foes below five goals. Six of the nine games were shutouts.
“I see the trend from my freshman year to my senior year,” Cummings said. “For one, we don’t have a lot of support coming from the outside. As far as money-wise, we wear the same pads pretty much, unless you buy your own stuff. They don’t put a lot of money for equipment or production, and we don’t get a lot of media coverage.
“The sport has really grown as far as skill-wise. That’s because during the offseason, we all like to come together and work out together and practice. [That’s true] no matter which school that you’re from.”
Ryan’s City team has seen fluctuating numbers over the years, with many players switching between sports during the summer. This spring, because of the shutdown of all athletic activities, his team might lose an entire season and the summer training along with it.
The summer program is in jeopardy as well.
“This is the first time in 31 years that I haven’t been out there in the spring,” said Ryan, a standout at Morgan State in the 1980s when the Bears had a varsity program. “So it’s greatly affected me.
“It’s a huge a gap. I plan my year to get ready for high school lacrosse during the season. Of course now, it’s kind of hard to find something to do without lacrosse and the kids themselves. I thought that I’d have a pretty good squad coming back. We had about 10 days of practice before all of this came out.”
As muchas Ryan feels for his top seniors like Cummings, he hurts just as much for the up-and-coming players on the team. Many of them don’t play year-round, and a month or two off is crippling to their development and the continued development of the program as a whole.
“I think about my seniors, and I didn’t have many of them … but for them this was a season that they were taking to really prove themselves,” Ryan said. “They were looking to go to college and so on and so forth. And maybe a kid that didn’t get that much playing time [before], this was a year to really to put his knuckles in the dirt and get ready to play the game as hard as he possibly could.”
While not officially canceled, the prospect of playing games this high school season is bleak. The earliest games could be played under the current timeline is early May.
Cummings, however, is holding out hope. For now, he has picked up classes online provided by City to finish his high school diploma. The instruction, which started last week, takes up roughly three hours a day and he said it has been a difficult transition so far.
“It’s hard when you when you’re trying to do work in your bed or in your house because you’re not as motivated to do the work that I do in school,” Cummings said. “A lot of the teachers are not really doing a good job at keeping the work up to date and keeping the students involved in it.
“It’s just a lot and it all just came out of nowhere. Not many people were ready for it.”
Cummings is doing his best to keep up with his practice schedule by playing wall-ball and keeping in shape with his home weights in his garage every day. He also goes running, but he hasn’t been able to go to the park and shoot on a goal during the outbreak.
Regardless of what happens in terms of this season, there’s definitely still lacrosse in Cummings’ future. Taking his talents to a historically black college, he wants to see the game grow for black kids and the universities they attend.
“It’s become more popular among black people,” Cummings said. “And now because of Baltimore City, we’ve got kids that want to play in college but aren’t getting recruited to play at [Johns] Hopkins or Maryland or anything like that.”