Varsity Boys Lacrosse: Knights go from parking lots to paradise

By Ben Spector
Winning After MidKnight

                       

It may seem odd to say, but the Middletown High School Varsity Boys Lacrosse team could probably agree with the sentiment behind the song “Big Yellow Taxi”. The comparison may be a confusing one as it seems like a high school lacrosse team and an angsty, environmentally motivated song that has been crooned by everyone from Joni Mitchell, to Bob Dylan, Counting Crows, and Kelly Rowland should have absolutely nothing in common.

It is the lyrics though, that would hit home for the boys from the Middletown Valley as the song famously says, “they paved paradise to put up a parking lot.”

We promise that there are no bulldozers on the way to tear down Knights Field at Middletown High School and turn it into an extension of the parking lot that borders it but the Knights will find solace in the lyric based on the fact that for a little while it may have seemed like Mother Nature paved over their home stadium.

The Knights due to an late February snow storm (yes, we’ve talked about it in all our articles but it’s effected everyone) were forced to move practices from their turf paradise to anywhere they could find open availability including, you guessed it, the Middletown High School main parking lot.

Middletown, therefore will relish the opportunity to get in some much needed scrimmage time on a nice field when they head down to Potomac, Maryland to take on the Winston Churchill High School Bulldogs at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 17^th.

The scrimmage will be the Knights first big test of the season as they take on a Bulldogs team that has won regional championships in two of the past three seasons and has been one of the top emerging teams of all the public schools in the D.C. Metro area over the past five years.

The Knights will look to solve multiple things after their meeting with the Bulldogs including determining a starting lineup for their season opener on Friday, March 20^th and trying to get a feel for where the team is at in the development of their players this early in the season.

The determination of the starting lineup through action in the scrimmage will most likely be the biggest issue for the Knights’ coaches to tackle as a large group of talented juniors has caused the coaching staff to keep an open mind to the talent in the Class of 2017.

Adding into that equation that the Knights are looking for starters at multiple positions including goaltender and defense, the importance of the scrimmage from an individual and personal standpoint for the players on Middletown is huge.

Obviously, because this game is a scrimmage against a team that Middletown won’t see in the regular season or in the playoffs the score, although a nice token, will mean nothing to either team in the contest.

The value of this game from the Middletown perspective can’t be understated though as it could help to shape the mold of what this team will be.