August 25, 2011
New England boys 'shock the world' with title
by Braden Campbell/
In just their third season, the UnderArmour Underclass Games have become one of the top events of the high school postseason, a tournament that brings together the top boys and girls underclassmen from around the country.
While every region of the country has been represented, the assumption that organizers and observers made from the beginning was that it would be teams from the New York or Maryland areas that would take home the crowns for years.
Sure, in the inaugural games in 2009, the New England boys’ team dropped a squad from Baltimore, and the buzz grew a little louder last year with an upset win over the team from Upstate New York.
But when the 2011 New England squad had to face off with Long Island — the hotbed of the hotbeds and the undefeated Underclass king — on July 3 with the title on the line, no one but the players on the team and their coaches seemed to think they had a chance.
The New England boys already had faced the Island once, surrendering a 9-8 lead en route to an 11-9 loss in their first game of the tournament. Few people expected this game to be even that close, but the New England team knew better.
“We showed up, Day One, lost to Long Island in a close one,” said Doug Gouchoe (Concord-Carlisle, Mass./Navy), one of two New England goalkeepers. “We sort of adopted the catchphrase, ‘We’re gonna shock the world.’”
That’s pretty much what happened from that first loss through the end of the tournament. New England narrowly edged out Upstate New York, 6-5, in their first game of the second day. One game later, the team surged back from a two-goal deficit with just over a minute left in regulation before taking down Philadelphia in double overtime.
The lead-up to the final was a relative cruise, as New England dropped the South squad and the New Jersey team by a combined eight goals to secure the championship berth.
Once there, New England wasted no time in translating their shock-the-world motto from talk to reality. The team clicked, blowing past Long Island to hold a 7-1 lead at the break.
“The (Long Island) fans were silent,” New England coach John Pirie said. “Their coaches were silent.”
New England loosened the noose a bit in the second half, and Long Island took advantage by rattling off a few quick scores, but there would be no Island comeback this time as New England held on for a 10-7 win.
Attackman Anthony Rocco (Avon Old Farms), midfielder Henry West (Darien, Conn./Cornell) and midfielder Tate Jozokos (Governor’s Academy/North Carolina) each had a pair of goals in the game.
At his players’ urging, Pirie bestowed co-MVP honors on his goalies, Gouchoe and William Ryan of Avon Old Farms, who split time through the weekend and traded halves in the final.
If there was an award for the most valuable player who didn’t see the field, it would have belonged to Case Matheis (Darien/Duke), who has been sidelined with a meniscus injury since the Connecticut playoffs.
With weeks left before his gait — let alone his game — was completely recovered, Matheis offered to lend Pirie his coaching services. Pirie, who has admired Matheis’ talent ever since he coached him at camp as a freshman, brought him in.
Matheis, who is on the short list of the best offensive rising juniors in the country, scouted the opposition. He sat with each defender, one on one, and told them how to shut their man down. It worked.
“He’s like the Rain Man savant of lacrosse,” Pirie said of Matheis. “We didn’t have Case on the field, but he was at least as valuable on the sideline, doing stuff that nobody else could have done for us.”
At tryouts, hardly three weeks before their championship win, most of these all-stars had only a passing knowledge of each other. A few were high school teammates; others were rivals. Some knew each other from the club and exhibition circuits.
Somewhere, whether in the few hours of practice they had prior to the games, or in the time spent sweating together on the Towson turf, these 25 athletes became more than a collection of all-stars. They became a team. And they became champions.
“You guys did it together, and that’s the only reason we got where we got today,” Pirie told them after the game. “Because every single one of you put your needs behind the rest of the team, and you worked as a team, you accomplished something pretty special.”
New England girls reach semifinals
The New England boys weren’t the only squad from the region to make a run in the tournament. The New England girls squad — which had won just a single game during the first two years of the UnderArmour Underclass tournament — went 3-2 and reached the semifinals.
Despite meeting its tournament end in a lopsided 16-5 loss to the eventual champs from Washington, D.C., girls coach Scott Biron said the team made considerable improvement, a trend he expects to continue.
“I told the girls when everything was over that they raised the bar for next year,” Biron said.
Couple that challenge with the appraisal of Pirie — who told Biron during the tournament that his girls resembled a certain boys squad that left the 2010 tournament poised for greatness — and it looks like New England teams will be taken more seriously on the national scene for years to come.
New England colleges land top players
The UnderArmour Games don’t just feature a contest between underclass players. There also is North-South battles between UnderArmour All-Americans who are headed to college in the fall.
Nine of the 22 players on the boys’ North team had ties to New England, either where they went to school or will play in college.
Walker Chaffee (Little Compton, R.I./Salisbury School/North Carolina), Conrad Oberbeck (Greenwich, Conn./Brunswick School/Yale) and Eric Parnon (Darien, Conn./Maryland) hail from New England, with Jimmy Bitter (Deerfield Academy/North Carolina) attending prep school in the region. New York natives Brian Fischer, Jake Gambitsky, Stephen Jahelka and Sean Mahon will be attending Harvard, with Brandon Gamblin joining the squad at UMass.
On the women’s All-American team, New Englanders Sarah Biron (Westwood, Mass./Johns Hopkins), Christine Ferguson (Weston, Mass./St. Paul’s/Cornell) and Chelsea Landon (Norwell, Mass./Noble & Greenough/Duke) were part of the North squad. Three more of their teammates — New York natives Kerri Fleishhacker (Yale), Mikaela Rix (Boston College) and goalie Kelly Weis (Harvard) — are headed to New England for college.
No members of the UnderArmour boys’ South team will play their college ball in New England. From the girls’ South team, attacker Covie Stanwick will bring her game to Boston College, and defender Clare Curran will attend Yale.
This article originally appeared in the August 2011 issue of New England Lacrosse Journal.
Braden Campbell can be reached at feedback@laxjournal.com
