Junior Midfielder Ryan Mulford and the Stags dropped their season opening game to Lafayette 15-10. They will look to rebound with a home game against Bryant this Saturday, Feb. 27 at noon. (Peter Caty/The Mirror)
Only 72 hours had passed since the men’s lacrosse team’s setback to Lafayette, 15-10, the team’s first season-opening loss since 1997. Head Coach Andy Copelan quietly collected his things after practice, left the office with a quickened pace, and braved the elements.
Copelan and his fellow assistant coaches proceeded to drive west to southern New York to scout Bryant, the team’s next opponent this coming Saturday at Alumni Field and the first of many daunting tasks on Fairfield’s schedule.
“Bryant’s a really good ball club,” Copelan said. “Obviously (Bryant head coach) Mike Pressler had a lot of success when he was at Duke. We have our hands full.”
Hands full, though, and an every day mentality seems to suit Copelan, his staff and his players just fine, whether it is a Saturday afternoon in between the lines or an afternoon scouting trip.
“He cares so much that it rubs off on the team,” junior defenseman Sean Bannon said. “It fuels us to win. It fuels us to play harder. I think we are going to be one of the better conditioned teams in the league and we’re definitely going to be one of the more competitive teams in the league.”
The Stags were competitive in their season-opener against Lafayette, but were plagued by a sluggish start and by the Leopards convincing fourth-quarter streak. Lafayette scored eight of the final ten goals, including three consecutive goals at the end of third quarter just as freshman midfielder Marshall Johnson scored his first collegiate goal to give the Stags their first lead of the game.
“We got down early and we showed some fight and some grit to get into a position where heading into the fourth quarter we were right there, but I didn’t think we played well down the stretch,” Copelan said. “I think this team is still trying to find its identity, trying to figure out who we are, and try to learn how to win some close ball games.”
“Our offense put up 10 goals. We should be able to win the game if our offense puts up ten goals,” Bannon added. “The way we look at it is that all the mistakes we made our correctable.”
That correction may or may not come this weekend against Pressler and Bryant, which defeated Army this past Tuesday to improve to an even 1-1 on the season. Regardless, the Stags are confident that the workmanlike attitude that Copelan has instilled in this team will lead to bigger and better things as Fairfield — and the team’s young offense — continues to evolve.
“I think that one of the things that we want to do is play 60 minutes of hard lacrosse,” said freshman attackman Sam Snow, who tallied a goal and two assists against Bryant and garnered Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) rookie of the week honors. “When Coach (Copelan) came and took the coaching job here, he said he wanted to turn us into tough kids. On the field, (other teams) won’t want to play Fairfield lacrosse. We’re going to hit them, get all the ground balls we can.”
“And we want to keep that up for 60 minutes,” Snow added.
If Snow, Johnson, and sophomores Brent Adams and John Snellman take the next step offensively this season, much of that is the fruits of far more than the youthful Stags’ continued development.
“We just have to make sure that we bring it everyday,” Copelan said. “As evidenced by Saturday (and Fairfield’s loss to Bryant), you can lose to anybody on any given day if you don’t bring it. But, at the same time, if you believe in yourselves and you can get that necessary chemistry going, you can beat anyone on any given day, too.”
“That needs to be our goal,” Copelan added.
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