In the middle of a lost summer for much of the world, Nick Marrocco found something within himself to overcome the 120-degree turf night after night after night, and the punishing string of games that he said left him sore for two weeks, to lead an undermanned team competing amid the fears and pressures of a pandemic on a run to a Major League Lacrosse championship.
It wasn’t until Marrocco got back to his Duxbury, Mass., home in late July that he said he found how much what the Boston Cannons did over the course of nine days in the heat of a coronavirus summer meant to his friends and neighbors along the South Shore.
“I love that part of it,” said Marrocco, four months removed from the 13-10 upset of the Denver Outlaws that brought the Cannons the Steinfeld Cup for the first time since 2011 and the second time in the franchise’s 20-year history. “I didn’t realize the impact our win had on a lot of Duxbury youth players. But I’ve had so many parents say something like that after we won. Even I didn’t comprehend the bigger impact we had.”