Sport thrives in city after hiatus
While COVID-19 had a massive impact on spring sports with the cancellation of the 2020 season, one thing it was not able to do was slow down the momentum of the Stamford boys lacrosse program.
Coach Mike Nazzaro and others have spent nearly a decade growing the sport in the city and based on the numbers coming back to play this spring, the sport appears on solid ground.
Not only did the number of players not significantly drop after the year off but the Black Knights are off to a 2-0 start with wins over Branford and Law ahead of jumping into the FCIAC schedule.
That sustainability of the program would not have been possible 10 years ago but times have changed for city lacrosse.
“We have a good following. We have kids now approaching us about wanting to play. We will still pull a few other athletes but the culture has started to build and now we have kids who are lacrosse players,” Nazzaro said. “The year off didn’t hurt us.
I think the kids really enjoy lacrosse and not having last season almost created more drive to come out and play. I’m still trying to reel new kids in when I can to get kids involved but less so than in the past.”
For years as the high school program was building and the youth program in Stamford was getting its sea legs, Nazzaro would recruit any athlete he could find in the Stamford hallways.
That generally left him with a team of good athletes but not many true lacrosse players.
Nowadays it is almost the opposite.
“Our freshmen team is now 80% players and 20% newbies as opposed to the reverse which it was in years past,” Nazzaro said. “We have a nice combo of kids. We still pull kids from football, basketball and hockey but we have lacrosse players now. We have kids that are coming in really good friends because they play youth football together in the fall and lacrosse in the spring. Football is going to grow and lacrosse is going to grow
and it’s going to be hand-inhand.”
Having players with experience from the youth level allows the coaching staff time to avoid having to coach fundamentals in season.
“When we were starting out we might get two or three kids a year coming into the school who had ever picked up a stick,” Nazzaro said. “That shift is huge. Being able to catch and throw year 1 and not having to learn that in your first year is so huge. Then we can go right into teaching concepts and game play as opposed to spending the first two weeks working on throwing and catching.”
Of the 18 freshmen in the program, 10 have experience out of the youth program.
This year, Stamford had just over 70 kids try out overall, including 17 seniors, most of whom played lacrosse as sophomores in 2019 and are back after the year off.
The team is led by seniors Eric Kelly, CJ Stone (four-year player), Cameron Cahoon (also the football QB) and Jason Bacco (AllFCIAC ice hockey).
The goalie is freshmen Nick Petrizzi who was the backup ice hockey goalie and has been playing lacrosse since fifth grade.
The team opened with a come-from-behind 11-6 win on the road at Branford after being down at halftime.
The Black Knights moved to 2-0 Tuesday night with a 16-6 victory against Law.
Stamford now enters the rough waters of the FCIAC but Nazzaro believes his team will soon be mentioned alongside the second-tier teams in the league.
“I hope that in a few years we will be in the upper third where we can compete with Ludlowe and Warde and Trumbull and schools like that,” Nazzaro said. “We have a lot of experienced players coming in and that’s the biggest thing I am holding on to hope with. We have four freshmen on varsity this year and we want that to be the way it is moving forward.”
The youth program, CT City Lacrosse, has been growing each season and is the linchpin of any future success, according to Nazzaro.
“The youth program is feeding into the high school really well now,” he said. “There are about 25 seventhand eighth-graders. The majority of those are public-school kids. With Westhill and us doing a good job of keeping kids involved in offseason programs it’s hopefully breeding a culture of kids wanting to come to this school to play this sport versus having it being ‘oh I guess I’ll try lacrosse.’ ”