From the podcast: Kyle Devitte, Mike Zhe break down the ISL

Grayson McClements of Nobles, Eli Goldstein of Belmont Hill and Nate Austin-Johnstone of Thayer.

On this week’s episode of New England Lacrosse Journal’s “Chasing The Goal” podcast, host Kyle Devitte is joined by Seamans Media print and digital managing editor Mike Zhe to break down the upcoming season in the Independent School League.

The ISL is home to a number of the region’s top prep school teams. Last season, Noble and Greenough completed a truly inspiring run to the championship with a 16-8 win over Governor’s Academy.

Last spring was also the debut of a new playoff format for the ISL that saw the top eight teams play in a single-elimination format to determine an overall champion.

Several teams head into the 2023 season with ambitions of getting to the championship tournament and/or winning it, while others are looking to improve upon their results last year.

You can read through all of our ISL preview coverage below before watching or listening to the podcast, which is now available to stream on YouTube.

If you enjoy it, please leave a rating and a review. Watch more episodes on the Chasing the Goal podcast channel.

Here are some excerpts from the podcast.

Kyle Devitte: Right now we’re going to dive headfirst, hopefully into the deep end of the pool, of the ISL. The ISL was very much assembled into tiers this year, and I think my initial thought when I talk to coaches was, “Do you think this league is top-heavy? Or do you think it’s more balanced?” And there are a lot of differing opinions. My personal opinion was that it was very top-heavy going in, and then looking through it and reading some of the stuff that you wrote up in the previews of all the different teams, seeing the commits and seeing last year’s records, this year’s records and then departed seniors, it’s really three tiers, right? 

Mike Zhe: I think three is the number we arrived at. Without identifying all the teams in that top tier, it’s a very interesting top tier in that I don’t think that there is a far-and-away clear favorite – or clear favorites – the way there’s been in seasons past. 

Read more: ISL preview, Part 1: A closer look at the league’s dark horses.

Read more: ISL preview, Part 2: The playoff contenders and outside shots.

Read more: ISL preview, Part 3: One of these five power teams will win it.

Read more: Coaches speak out: Who is the ISL’s most impressive player?

Read more: Coaches speak out: Who is the ISL’s most underrated player?

KD: When we’re talking about all these teams, you can kind of assemble a top five just by — if you want to be lazy — by commits. But we don’t do that. We talk to coaches. I watch the tape. I watch the players in the summer. I mean, most of the players on these teams are on club teams, right? Even if they’re not — and if they’re not, it’s because they play hockey or they play another sport — lacrosse is a primary sport. And that’s one of the great things about the prep school ranks is that you’re always getting a level of athleticism that if you can maintain it all the way down your roster, you’re just going to be tougher to beat, right?

I think that’s kind of the thing that always jumps out when I’m looking at all these lists and people have this preview for this team. A lot of it’s based on talent, but talent doesn’t determine everything. That’s one of the reasons why it’s hard to pick a frontrunner because there is a huge dispersal of talent and it’s really just the depth of things. Last year, I think the story around the ISL was “great.” All these great face-off guys. All these great goalies. One of the teams that have both of those is going to win. It’s not what happened. Nobles didn’t really have a face-off guy because he got hurt early in the season. They did have a great goalie and they had an amazing attackman with an incredible story in Chad Palumbo. 

MZ: We sat here in the studio a year ago and we did the ISL show last year with Jack (Piatelli), and looking back at it, I think we had a fairly good handle on how the league was going to shake out. I don’t think we saw Tabor doing what they did. That was maybe one team that could have been included in our top-tier preview. But I think we had a feel for the league — who could contend and who were legit challengers.

This year feels a little different because I think there are more teams that are legitimately going to contend and there are more teams that are going to contend for one of those top-eight playoff spots.

@TheKyleDevitte
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