The HRV boys lacrosse team’s season came to an end Friday night in Hillsboro, where the No. 17 Eagles fell 11-3 to No. 16 Glencoe in a first-round playoff game of the Oregon High School Lacrosse Association’s champion bracket.
For a season that started with an expectation that the team would make a deep playoff run, HRV Head Coach Matt Luchsinger could look at that ending as a disappointment. But for a team whose ranks had been decimated by injuries and off-field problems, Luchsinger was anything but unhappy with his players.
“Overall, I’m ecstatic that we made the playoffs, with what we went through with on field to off-field issues, due to grades and injuries,” he said. “The fact we were here was unbelievable.”
The Eagles started the season with a 23-man roster, which eventually fell to 16. Of those 16, only eight were on the varsity squad in March, with the rest pulled up from junior varsity. By the end of the season, only two seniors were on the team and only one, long-stick midfielder Alex Ellifritz, made it to the game Friday night. Behind the seniors were “a handful of juniors,” with the rest of the team’s roster fleshed out with sophomores and freshman.
Luchsinger said some of that youth and inexperience at the varsity level played a role in HRV’s troubles in its game with Glencoe, as the team was “outhustled” by the Crimson Tide, with Luchsinger noting that “overall those kids that came up from JV aren’t used to that style of play, that speed, that power” and haven’t had much time to play along with the varsity athletes this season.
Although they got beat to ground balls and couldn’t match Glencoe in goals, Luchsinger said his team “competed pretty hard,” and that the JV players deserve special recognition for their efforts in the latter part of the season.
“The sophomores and freshmen really stepped up this season,” he said. “My hat’s off to them. I’m really proud of them.”
One of those former JV players, Steven Crouch, a junior who has led HRV the past three games in scoring, put up a goal in Friday’s game. Also scoring were Elliot Cramer and Cale Brown. Bruce Ostler had a team-high two assists and Mason Collins also had an assist that evening. Luchsinger said that Ostler, a junior middie, “pretty much played the game with one arm,” after his shoulder popped out and then back in during play in the third quarter.
“His arm was pretty sore, but he wouldn’t sit,” Luchsinger said of Ostler, who also collected a team-high five ground balls along with Alex McAlpine. “He kept playing and chugging away and getting other kids involved.”
Jhett Chrisman started in net for HRV and had nine saves. The Crimson Tide took a total of 30 shots in the game, but not all were on goal.
Next year, Luchsinger said he plans to address off-field issues, should they arise, quicker than he did this season and will focus on developing what will likely be another roster composed of young faces. If nothing else, this season showed Luchsinger that the young players in the HRV program have both the talent and the character to carry the team far in 2017.
“I think the future is extremely bright for these young boys,” he said.
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