In sports today, it seems that for a team to accomplish anything significant requires overcoming adversity.
The term “adversity” is becoming a buzzword of sorts and has almost lost its true meaning. In winning the men’s basketball national championship earlier this month, Duke spoke of the adversity it overcame. The same goes for the Baltimore Ravens in the Super Bowl. And I’m sure the Yankees feel they have had plenty of adversity of their own in winning three straight World Series.
This constant overcoming of adversity is almost weakening the term. If pitcher Bryce Florie comes back to pitch for the Red Sox later this season — less than a year after taking a line-drive to the eye socket that nearly killed him — that will be overcoming adversity. And if anybody overcame adversity last month, it was Arizona, the team that lost to Duke in the title game, and not the Blue Devils themselves.
Those are examples of emotional adversity. Our Boston University men’s lacrosse team, which enters the Pioneer League postseason tournament tomorrow, got to where it is now by battling a large amount of its own diversity.
Imagine if you had to play your first regular season game and had yet to practice on a full-length field. Imagine having to hold those practices in the non-insulated Armory at 8 a.m. on cold Saturdays in February. Imagine not having a home field to play on, making every one of your games an away game. Imagine being a club sport and being last in line for facility usage when, understandably, the varsity programs enduring the same wet weather and lack of field space get first dibs on optimal practice times and locations.
That’s just the beginning. Now imagine having to replace nearly every starter that helped you to an 8-2 mark and a spot in the league championship the year before. Imagine six out of the 10 guys pegged to start this season missing action due to injury, including your entire defensive unit. Imagine a potential roster of approximately three dozen dwindle down to 13 players for a given game.
That’s adversity.
“It is definitely something we’ve had to work on,” said BU men’s lacrosse coach Dan Morris. “I’m very proud of the guys for really sticking with it for the entire season. It’s very difficult to field a men’s lacrosse team without a field, but we feel fortunate for what we get.”
“When key players are out, lines change and team chemistry changes,” said sophomore defenseman Zac Fermanis, who is expected to play tomorrow after having been out of action since April 11 with a dislocated right shoulder. “It’s difficult to get used to different players when lines keep shifting due to injuries.”
And despite it all, the men’s lacrosse team has persevered to a 3-6 record this year going into the league tournament. While the ultimate goal is a league championship and a trip to St. Louis to represent the Pioneer League in the national championships, there are other measurable milestones along the way, starting tomorrow night.
Odds are that BU will meet up with Northeastern University in the first round of the postseason, a situation that sophomore defenseman Brad Eisen described as both “perfect” and “storybook.”
Going into this season, BU owned Northeastern, defeating the Huskies the last six times. But everything changed this season, as Northeastern took two games from the Terriers: a 10-5 victory in BU’s season-opener on March 28 and an 11-10 overtime win April 6.
“Going into the first game against Northeastern was like having practiced basketball on a half court for weeks and then being forced to play a full-court game,” Fermanis said. “With the second game, we were up 5-1 after the first quarter, but having not been able to get much time on full field cost us in the middle of the game.”
Maybe third time will be the charm. But at least the Terriers will find themselves in an unfamiliar yet favorable situation, in that nearly every one of the 11 starters pegged to start the season will be in uniform tomorrow for the first time this season.
“We’re going into the playoffs 0-0,” Morris said. “This season, it’s tough to win games when you don’t have your full squads. But these guys come to practice and are generally enthused although the space is pretty miserable. You can tell they really love the game. They want it to be a part of their lives.”
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