The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
JEFF JACOBS
This moment is ‘not too big’ for Wesleyan
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — They held their graduation ceremonies in the intimacy of the admissions office. They held their national championship celebration for the lacrosse world to see.
Down to following some advice from Bill Belichick, there was something meticulously planned and structured in Wesleyan’s 8-6 victory over Salisbury for the school’s first national title in any sport.
Yet when the final horn sounded at Gillette Stadium on Sunday, something undeniably joyful and spontaneous happened. Senior Taylor Ghesquiere grabbed the championship trophy before it was formally presented, the Cardinals ran toward the sea of red and a few did the Lambeau Leap into the stands to celebrate with family and friends.
“An incredible moment for our program,” coach John Raba said.
Sixteen members of the Wesleyan lacrosse program earned their degrees Wednesday. At a NESCAC school with considerable academic expectations, you earn it. That much is given.
Yet it is also true no group of athletes ever earned a national Division III championship more. The Cardinals had lost to Tufts twice, the second time for the NESCAC championship. The first time, they had mourned together with senior teammate Ben Shively. They would return to beat the nation’s No. 2 seed at Tufts in the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals.
“Murderer’s row,” said Raba, tracing his opponents back to the NESCAC tournament.
“Down the gauntlet,” said senior Eric Meyreles.
The No. 9 Cardinals would go back on the road last weekend to beat No. 1 RIT in an 18-17 Final Four thriller in Rochester. RIT had ended Wesleyan’s 20game winning streak last year in the Final Four. The moment, senior Harry Stanton, the 5-foot-7 dynamo from New Canaan, admitted, “was a little too big for us.”
No moments were too big this year. In the end the Cardinals would knock off No. 3 Salisbury, the twotime defending national champions, with a zone defense staunch and aggressive. In the end, Stanton,
would score two goals, one that snuffed a Salisbury comeback, and would be named the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament.
“An incredible feeling,” Stanton said. “We talk about ups and downs, a lot of people say it, but they don’t mean it. Losing to Coast Guard, Tufts twice, we could have folded. But we decided we had bigger goals this year.”
Big goals like graduating. With Wesleyan’s graduation exercises Sunday, athletic director Mike Whalen talked to school president Michael Roth about a ceremony for lacrosse. They talked about Monday after the championship, but several players had made reservations a long time ago to go to Nantucket. They settled on Wednesday. Roth and several administrators attended. The families were there. Assistant coach Will Pilat received his master’s degree.
It was really cool, Whalen said.
“A very intimate, very personal ceremony,” Meyreles said. “Our president gave us a really nice speech. Sent us off ready to go.
“We say it all the time, we’re living the dream right now. It’s really cool to be able to capture the dream. I said to the team the other day, ‘how cool would it be to be the one team to show up here in Wesleyan history and the one team to walk away with the championship trophy in our hands?’ ”
And the one to grab it before the formal presentation.
“Unbelievable experience,” Meyreles said, “and we’re so glad we were able to get this done for all the people that came before us and set the precedent for all the players to come next.”
The Cardinals signed autographs and watched the first half of the Yale Division I Final Four victory over Albany on Saturday before dinner. There was a little blip when Raba’s mom arrived and there was a wrong hotel room. “Chaos,” the coach said with a smile.
The truth is Raba and the Cardinals did a terrific job to stay in a routine. Whalen had talked to Belichick — the Patriots coach was not at the game — the expert on minimizing distractions.
“Bill said, ‘Look, you have to shield John for all this other stuff,’ ” Whalen said. “Tickets, all that stuff they’re used to dealing with at the Super Bowl. That’s what we did last Monday.”
Everybody had an assignment.
“Nothing gets to Raba,” Whalen said. “He has to prepare the team.”
And so Raba, in his 22nd season, did. The larger truth is the preparation started a long time ago for the former two-star athlete at the University of New Haven. He would talk to his team about remembering the past.
“We talked about my first season here, we won one NESCAC game,” Raba said. “If someone asked me or told me you’re going to win a national championship, I would have said to them in what sport? Because it’s not going to be lacrosse the way it’s going right now.”
Raba took no shortcuts. He got the right players. He did not allow lacrosse to cut into academic time.
“Four-thirty is not the most optimal time to practice and as I get older I’m tired,” he said. “I wish it was earlier in the day, but that’s the way it goes. It’s the best for our student-athletes.”
Raba talked about a great email from Belichick about the experience of being in big games, “some good pointers.” And then he talked about his pressure zone defense that he credited to former New York Tech coach Jack Kaley. When the team goes on defense, the Wesleyan crowd will even yell, “Tech!”
“Coach Kaley invented it and won national championships at Division II,” Raba said. “I’ve had questions. Can you win a national championship with a zone defense? We’ve gone deep (four Final Fours) and won NESCAC championships, but we didn’t win it. For the the guys to have the faith in what we’re doing system-wise, I feel great.”
In a moment of reflection, Stanton would talk about the dinner for the NCAA finalists the other night and how a Wounded Warrior rose to speak.
“Incredible speech,” Stanton said. “In the big picture, it’s just a game. He also said you can touch a lot of people with this game. We’ve had a tough year. We’ve faced some real-life adversity. You see how many parents were there for us. Even a tailgate up in Colby, you realize it’s so much bigger, how much joy you can bring to your friends and families.”
And then John Raba talked about Shively, making a tremendous play near the end of Sunday. He picked off a ball just when Wesleyan needed to slow Salisbury momentum.
“People don’t know this, his father (George) passed away before the Tufts game and our entire team, we drove down to New York (for services), came back on the bus with no practice. We played Tufts the next day. There was no question that’s what we needed to do as a team.”
The Cardinals would lose that game as a team in early April.
They earned the school’s first national championship as one Sunday.