The men’s lacrosse team is coming off their best start in school history with a 7-0 start before COVID shut everything down.
Colorado Mesa University (CMU) has 17 freshmen and 23 redshirt freshmen on the roster this season. The Mavericks have 12 sophomores, juniors and seniors including one graduate student this year.
“We had five guys raise their hand because they were on the 2018 team, and we had 11 guys raise their hand because they were on the 2019 team. The sophomores don’t even remember what it was like to lose a game here, so we’ve got to bring those guys back to reality a little bit,” Men’s Lacrosse Head Coach,Vince Smith said.
The Mavericks lost five of their top 10 scorers from last year.
James Booth was CMU’s leading scorer last year as he registered 36 points in the lefty attackman position. Booth chose to not take his extra-year of eligibility which leaves his role open.
“I think whoever plays that [left position], it’s a role that as time goes on, we will figure out what that role needs, or what the offense needs in general. So, whatever we feel we need to be successful we’ll do a good job of filling that position,” Schwark said.
Redshirt junior attackman Carson Schwark is one of four upperclassmen on the offense, and he will be asked to step up on and off the field. He finished as the fifth leading scorer for CMU last season with 11 goals along with three assists.
The Mavericks also return their dynamic redshirt freshmen attackmen in AJ Switzer and Jed Brummett. They finished as the second and third-leading scorers for CMU and they will need to help Schwark fill Booth’s role.
The thing to watch with this Maverick offense is going to be how they perform in the six versus six settled offensive possessions.
“They’ve got to figure it out. You can’t just dodge and shoot, you’ve got to dodge, pass, pass and dodge again. The more you can do that, the more opportunities you’re creating for the defense to slide and generate mismatches and things like that. We’ve just got to settle down, right now when we are doing six versus six in practice, it’s pretty helter-skelter,” Smith said.
The offense will have to grow up quickly as CMU plays the University of Mount Olive (UMO) in the second game of the season. UMO opened the season at No. 10 in the nation in the United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association’s preseason rankings.
Redshirt freshmen faceoff men Cole Emmanuel and Colin Seedorf are back for the Mavericks. Both finished the season with a faceoff winning percentage of 75.9.
Emmanuel handled the majority of the faceoff’s but Seedorf proved to be a nice change of pace for CMU last season.
The NCAA changed the rules of faceoffs which will be an area to watch as they made it illegal to use a grip technique on your stick and one common faceoff stance.
“You don’t really have the time or space to rotate around to try to fight like over the ball. You don’t have all the different exits that we used to have. It’s all about hand speed and how fast you can explode out of the circle,” Emmanuel said.
The Mavericks will have a different look in net this year as Remi Reeves and Christian Cherry graduated after being with the team their entire career.
“I think the [goalies] that will play are the ones that can talk the loudest. The [goalies] that understand the clearing and the riding, which is huge. They are the commander, and we shouldn’t have our defenders leading our defense, that should be him because he sees everything,” redshirt sophomore defender Vinny Curci said.
Redshirt freshman Nolan Hoffman is the only returning goalie that registered time last year. He played 30 minutes against Shorter University and registered one save.
The defense returns key players which should be able to help ease the transition for the goalie that wins the job.
The core of the Mavericks defense returns with redshirt senior Deandre Ross and redshirt sophomores Tanner Stopkoski and Curci. The trio started six of the seven games and combined for 19 caused turnovers last season.
CMU’s defense also returns 11 of their 15 players from last year, so the Maverick’s new goalie will have experience in front of him.
The Maverick’s first game is Feb. 27 against Brigham Young University at 2 p.m. at Maverick Field.
