Like I said, going back a bit for these. This was by far the most exciting high school game I have seen here in Windham. The Jaguars trailed for the entire game, never once having the lead and were down by two goals a number of times. In the end though, their offense came through in the final minutes scoring three goals late in the game including one with only about 3 seconds left to take the win. Best win of the year and put Windham into third place in DII in the State where they would stay. Literally showing their heart and blood to get the win.
Windham Varsity Lacrosse vs. Hanover 5/13/22
Going into the wayback machine here but I hadn’t gotten around to these pics yet. This was a 14-5 win for Windham that started the first of what would be 6 wins in a row to close the season and place them the third seed for the DII NH Playoffs. Game #1 is today against Alvrine who Windham has taken down twice already this year. Hopefully the team will stay healthy, get a bit of a challenge but put the game away and move on to the second round.
Windham Varsity Lacrosse vs. Alvirne 04/18/22
I had not posted anything on the past Friday’s game—which was a 16-0 shutout of Kingswood who was supposed to be a decent team this year due to it being an evening game under what passed for “lights”. I quit taking pictures at the half as it just wasn’t worth it. I can crank the ISO and get shots that look fair on a .25” by .25” square but its not worth my time to even look through those let alone edit them…so into the trash they go.
Monday’s 15-2 win over Alvirne is a different story. At least there are some good shots from that game, as relatively uncompetitive as it was. Likely the most physical game of the year so far there were some decent hits given in both direction and a number of fouls as well. Windham kept up its heavy scoring attack and were kept to 15 goals by some great play by the Alvirne goalie who was their best player on the day. Despite the score, Windham got frustrated at times with the saves he was making to the point of trying trick shots and a number of skip shots to try and get past the keeper. Prior games saw Windham scoring on what appeared to be about 2/3 of their shots where here they got more shots off but only were scoring on about 40% if I had to guess.
Windham’s defense also had to play on its heals a bit more than in prior games with a number of “man down” situations. This was what was most notable as Windham’s D in these situations stood strong and kept the Alvirne shooters to the outside and frustrated their ability to get clean looks in a dangerous position. This bodes well for the remainder of the season if they can keep it up. Too often do High School lacrosse players allow shooters to get their arms and hands free vs. staying in the chest and hips of their opponents and here we saw great improvement in this area. Windham goalie Jack Milano was once again more than up to the task of saving the bulk of shots sent his way and remains an anchor in making smart and crisp passes out of the crease.
Wednesday brings what should (though I thought this of the Alvirne game too…) be the first big test of Windham’s season. Losing out in the first round of the ‘21 playoffs to Hollis-Brookline in a bitter 18-9 defeat, Windham will be out for a bit of redemption but as we saw last year where Windham came into the playoffs with a higher seed…nothing can be taken for granted.
Windham Varsity Lacrosse vs. Portsmouth 04/13/21
Well now….that wasn’t what we wanted was it? An 11-5 loss to start the season when nothing seemed to work right. Tons of standing around on offense with no cutters, few shots and no drives to the net outside of the first five minutes of the game. Defense? Well…it was there…It just didn’t come to play much. Almost no physicality, no one was being a pest…no price was paid for Portsmouth to reach the goal mouth again and again and again. No one gave up the body to block the shots that were had over and over. Goalie’s? Not really known. They certainly faced a ton of shots but not one of the three that came in stood out given what they faced. Lastly, faceoffs….well…when you lose some 75%+ of them you are automatically giving the opposing team way too many possessions that if you aren’t going to play aggressive defense, are going to continue to end up with balls in the back of the net. Well…Next time it is boys. Gotta bring more than this in the next game. Portsmouth may simply be the better team but Windham can certainly close the gap and make it harder on them at the least.
As for me? Well, lacrosse is unquestionably more difficult to photograph than either basketball or football. Football is agonizingly slow in comparison to both sports which makes finding the action easy. Basketball has the advantage of a lack of equipment which makes getting great facial expressions easy. Lacrosse? It moves very fast with lots of intersecting traffic on top of all the face hiding helmets and many of the players you want to shoot never come close to you if you stay on one side or the other of the field and the endlines are “verboten” due to the “danger” of being hit by a ball. The only good thing is the light. Being outdoors and during daylight hours at least let you crank the shutter speed. So a big learning curve for me to. Hopefully I will bring a better photography game to the rest of the year.
So a toast to us both…may we all bring a better effort in the days to come.
