Colorado Raiders Join Lacrosse Elite at U15 National Championship
This is a story of a recreational lacrosse team that developed into a national contender in just a few short years. This Raiders team came into existence three years ago as a mid-level developmental team. No players were turned away and we had eleven players on that team that had never played lacrosse before. Miraculously we ended up the season at twelve wins and two losses. It seemed like we could have produced a movie based upon that season and believe me, I thought about it.
The second year, we stepped up to a tougher level of competition at the second highest level in the state of Colorado. With a record of nineteen wins and zero losses, (a dream season) in that second year (2008), we were compelled to try our hand at the red (highest) level this year (2009).
Head coach Don Knobloch had a vision and methodically went about making it happen. The regular season was a challenge as we finished with two wins and eight losses with fourteen players and were quickly eliminated from the state championship.
As I mentioned, Coach Knobloch had a plan, though, and twelve outstanding additional players joined the team in the postseason as we attempted to win the Colorado Cup. We finished the Cup as champions with six wins and zero losses as we defeated the state select team twice.
We encountered some challenges in the Vail Shootout and finished fourth out of sixteen teams. The ultimate winner was a great team representing the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA). Lessons were learned by all of us and we were cautioned that we were going to have challenges in the national championship as most teams would be comprised of a mixture of ‘rising’ high school sophomores and freshmen. Our team consisted of rising seventh, eight and ninth graders. Oh boy!
That brought us to the ultimate goal, the U15 National Championship. Thirty-two teams from all regions of the country descended upon Bel Air, MD for the championship July 8-10, 2009. We started off playing against one the tournament’s top teams, Blackwolf Select. We weren’t ready for what we encountered, lost ten to two, and stood at the verge of being eliminated from the championship bracket. One more loss in our three games in pool play and we would go to the consolation bracket. Ouch. We didn’t spend all that money and time practicing to be eliminated so quickly.
In our second game against Team Vermont we won eleven to seven and found ourselves slotted to play the Maryland Hot Stix. We didn’t know what to expect but, hey, it was a Maryland team that had showed up very well in a prestigous tournament earlier in this year. We started the game very apprehensively as Maryland, and the Northeast in general are the hotbeds for lacrosse at any levels in the United States. We played a real tough game, came out on top nine to five, and thus were headed to the Championship Bracket. WOW! We could have stopped there and it would have been a dream come true.
The next day we began by playing against the number one seed, “Next Level Lacrosse”. We were introduced to a brand of lacrosse that we hadn’t seen yet and lost eleven to one. We were sure that Next Level would be the ultimate champions!
Now at two wins and two losses, we were facing elimination from the tournament in our next game. We watched as Team Colorado was eliminated from the tournament in the losers bracket and felt lucky indeed that we might end up ranked as the sixteenth team in the tournament.
Our next opponent, the BattleLax Bombers, a team from North Carolina, with ten rising sopohomores, played a strong game against us. Against many odds, we came from behind to win six to five after our starting goalie, Jason Cleary, stopped a point blank shot with just a few seconds remaining. The players mobbed Jason and we were on Cloud Nine! We now knew that we couldn’t finish worse than twelfth in the country. It was an amazing feeling.
Although we lost the next day to a strong Ithaca team, we were very content to know that we finished our season within the top twelve teams in the country. The ultimate winner was FCA and although the coach was the same as the Vail team, he had some new players that were rising sophomores. You’d have to say that the FCA coach, Frank Kelly was the U15 coach of the year. What a great coach and a nice guy as well.
It’s been a dream ride, but most of our boys are off to high school and probably ten different teams. The comraderie and sense of family has been tremendous and these boys will be linked forever. With a mixture of emotions, I say “Go Raiders” or ”303′ as the players would chant after huddles. I’ll miss this group of boys.
