The La Salle Academy (R.I.) boys found a way to celebrate their ninth consecutive state championship last month. (Mark Tetreault)
With a combination of the lost season, a short ramp-up to this season -- which excluded the normal scrimmage runs against some of the Massachusetts powers -- and an overall shortened schedule of games, La Salle head coach Steve O’Donnell described it all succinctly as “strange.”
“We started five weeks late; we had two weeks to prepare,” explained O’Donnell. “We only got one scrimmage (and) we couldn’t go out of state. The preparation was tough. Championship-wise, only a handful of kids had varsity playoff experience.”
Even the matchup in the Division 1 championship game, though quite a familiar one, had a rather strange reversal of fortune entering it.
