With big victories over Delran, Holy Cross, Moorestown Friends, and New Egypt, the boys’ lacrosse team finished second in the division behind Northern Burlington. Looking to improve upon last season’s 11-7 record, the boys are currently 11-4 and anticipate a playoff run.
Head Coach Craig Angelini has returned for another season; his second after taking several years off from coaching. Joining him at the helm are newly elected captains: seniors Killian Pease, Ian Blue, Damien Bird, and junior Shay McDevitt.
Although the Pirates are well into their season at this point, it hasn’t been without some challenges, including strengthening students’ knowledge of the game.
“Lacrosse is a different game in that it requires athleticism, but it also requires a lot of skills that are not necessarily intuitive or natural skills. They’re skills that require a lot of development and I think we need to work on trying to bring up our level of what they call ‘lacrosse IQ’ up,” Pease said. “… So I think that’s probably our biggest hurdle. The way we’re going to do that is just by continually working hard.”
The team has had to find its footing after graduating seven of its seniors at the end of last season.
“I do think it affected our team. It allowed us to open up a lot of space for younger players to come in and a lot of people, they just didn’t know how to fill the new roles,” McDevitt said. “So getting these young players to fill the roles that they left was definitely hard, but now they’re starting to get into things and it just only makes us better for the future.”
Pease acknowledges the team’s growth over his four years of playing the sport and said he is looking forward to playoffs.
“This season we definitely have the most potential to win more games because our team is the best it’s ever been since I’ve been on it,” Pease said. “A few seasons ago, we didn’t make the playoffs my sophomore year. Freshman year we lost the first round and junior year we lost the first round. So I’m very lucky. I’m very much looking forward to the playoffs and the chance that we’re in the division.”
One of the reasons for the boys’ success is their ability to communicate and work together more throughout the 2024 season. Pease explains how the boys keep each other’s spirits up even during tough games.
“We kind of just get really loud, say some certain words and just kind of like hype them up, and get them ready for the game and get the energy out,” Pease said.
Coach Angelini recognizes and pays close attention to the players that put in the hardwork and are great teammates to everyone. One of those players is McDevitt, who according to Angelini, has shown a lot of improvement.
“In terms of he’s always been a pretty athletic kid, but he’s learned the game more and he’s been very focused in and working extremely hard to improve his game on and off this season,” Angelini said.
McDevitt attributes his success to Coach Angelini. He said his patience and knowledge of the sports has helped him.
“I look up to my coach a lot. He’s super calm, and he knows what he’s talking about and he tries to get everyone better and in good ways… I just look up to him a lot. I try to be like him,” McDevitt said.
With the goal of winning more games than last season, the boys have two games left in regular season. Having fallen to Northern Burlington twice this season, Angelini said he knew the Greyhounds would be the Pirates’ biggest rival.
“Northern Burlington is our biggest rival because they are in our league and they are the other team in our league, which is a big challenge,” Angelini said. “They are the biggest competitive challenge and they are our league rival that we have to beat to get a league title.”
While overcoming the loss of last season’s seniors was challenging, the boys will have to rebuild next season as they double their number of graduating seniors to 14 at the end of this season.
The Pirates next game is away on Tuesday, May 14 against Washington Township where they will look to extend their winning record.
