True Champions

With summer lacrosse leagues now in playoff mode, it is no secret that the Rochester Knighthawks players are dominating the field, hoping to carry over their champion status's to each of their perspective summer teams. 

In the MLL, Joe Walters has made his presence well-known on the field for his team, the Hamilton Nationals. Hamilton clinched a playoff spot with a win this past weekend against Boston. Walters is currently 5th overall in scoring for the MLL with 41 points. Let's hope that his outstanding performance will carry over into the 2014 NLL season (which I have no doubt that it will)!

Johnny Powless has also had an extraordinary season with the Six Nations Arrows. Powless has accumulated a total of 55 points in just nine games with the Arrows (according to Rochester Knighthawks twitter). With a win last night against Peterborough, the Arrows are headed to the Ontario finals looking to play for the Minto Cup. 


Whether they are together playing for Rochester or spread across the United States and Canada, your Rochester Knighthawks are playing like the champions they truly are! 

What's Going On In Summer Leagues?

The NLL season is long gone and here we are, a few weeks into the summer lacrosse season. Let's take a look at some of the highlights from the past couple of weeks!

NCAA: 

Syracuse and Duke will fight for the Division l championship tomorrow. Duke held off Cornell and Syracuse beat Denver. The game was not looking great for Syracuse, who trailed for the entire game but, with the help of Jojo Marasco, they were able to tie then get ahead in the last few minutes of the game. Watching that game proved that anything can happen in the game of lacrosse and no lead is a safe lead. 

Tune in tomorrow (Monday, May 27) to see who will be declared the Division l champions!


MLL: 

The Hamilton Nationals currently hold a 4-0 record. Kevin Crowley and Joe Walters have been making their presence noticed on the field. In the game against the Machine on Thursday, Crowley totaled six points (5+1) and Walters ended with seven points (4+3). With this win, the Nationals are tied with the Denver Outlaws for first place. 

With their fourth loss, the Machine currently hold a 0-4 record, making them the last place team in the league. Though the season has just begun, it will be interesting to see if the team can pick up the pace and turn their season around. 

WLA:

The Victoria Shamrocks earned their third win of the season this weekend with a win over the Burnaby Lakers. They remain undefeated. The only other team that remains undefeated is the Langley Thunder. The top players thus far are Scott Ranger, Cory Conway, and Corey Small. 
  


I do enjoy learning more about the other leagues out there and this is going to be a learning experience for me so bare with me for a little bit while I get used to the other leagues! It's great to see many of the NLL players take the field in other leagues! 

 

NLL Entry Draft for the 2014 Season

Even though the season just ended, NLL.com has already started to get fans thinking about the entry draft for the 2014 season.

Minnesota is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the next season. The team, which already is full of talent and made it pretty far in the 2013 season has four  first round picks, including the first two. This is bound to boost up their already very accomplished team. Andrew Suitor (who was out due to an injury for most of the 2013 season) and Ryan Benesch  (who lead the team in points in the 2013 season) for offense and transition combined with the first two first-round entry draft picks could be deadly. 

Buffalo gave up many of their picks for trades during the 2013 season and now do not have a pick until the second round of the entry draft. They gave up many great players this season and are probably kicking themselves for it as a few of those players were traded to Rochester and contributed to a championship win. Two of those players include Scott Self and Jimmy Purves, who were both regularly on the floor.

Rochester does not have any picks until round three but the team seems pretty well off as they are so why change what is not broken. The team that they have built over the past couple of years is strong and knows how to work together. Adding too many new players to it would throw off the synchronization of the team. One thing they lack-- someone to take face-offs. It wouldn't be surprising to see Jon Sullivan, Matt Hummel, and even Stephen Keogh get traded from the team. Keogh lives in Florida now and was not a regular player this season even though he was prominent on the team in the 2012 season.




Is it too early to make predictions for how next season will play out? Well, here is what I think: In the end I pick Minnesota for the west and I have to stick with Rochester or Toronto for the east.

What Now?

Well, fellow followers, now that the NLL season is over I am at a stand-still as to where I am going to go with this blog. I do not want to just stop posting just because the season is over and the trophy has been awarded (go hawks)!

As the semester is coming to an end, I have posted my final article for my Writing for News Publication class which this blog was originally created for. Being in this class and being given the amount of work that we were given was a real wake-up call but I have learned something through doing all of this work. I have come to the realization that what I want to do with my career and future is communications and beat writing within the lacrosse community. That's a far cry from my original dream of being a news anchor on TV. 

I have been an NLL fan since I was 6 years old and have had season tickets to the Knighthawks for over ten years! I think I have found the perfect mix of my two passions which are writing and lacrosse.

Writing these articles has pushed me to get in contact with players and people within the Rochester Knighthawks organization which is something that I would have never thought of doing if it were not for these assignments. I now have some connections (even if they are not strong connections). 

 I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the people who have taken the time to get back to me when I asked them questions for my assignments because they did not have to do it but, out of the kindness of their hearts, they did. They were extremely kind to me too!

I look forward to my future and am excited to see where all of this leads me. My plans, you ask? Well, I am planning on applying for an internship within the communications department at the Rochester Knighthawks office. That will bring me one step closer to my new-found dream. 

As far as this blog goes, I think I am going to start writing over the summer for both the outdoor and indoor leagues in the US and Canada. Summer leagues are new territory for me but I have found something that I truly enjoy doing and would love to make a career out of.



So, just because the NLL is over for the season and school is ending for the summer, if you have any interest in Lacrosse and my writing, please check back here every once in a while because it really means a lot to see that I have viewers on my blog!

Here's to a new chapter of this blog! Summer box lacrosse and the MLL have just begun! I'm excited to continue this journey in the world of journalism, social media and blogging!

NLL and the Fans

Forming a true, personal connection to fans is hard to come across in most professional sports but, in the National Lacrosse League, players take a substantial amount of pride in the relationships that they build with the people who support them..

Most professional athletes take pride in the fan base that they form, but another major motivation is the paycheck they receive for being a professional. Lacrosse players do not make the money that most other professional athletes make. Players in the NLL make an average salary of just under $20,000, according to the NLL. To put that into perspective, the average salary of an NFL athlete, according to businessweek.com, is $1.3 million and the average salary of a professional hockey player in the NHL is $2.4 million.

When it comes to lacrosse players, it is clear that the paycheck does not mean much to them. Most professional lacrosse players have other jobs that they work during the week in order to make a living salary, and they play lacrosse on the weekends. That means that lacrosse players’ lives are twice as busy as most other professional athletes. It is a balancing act for the players who also must make time for family and friends on top of work and practice.

So why do lacrosse players take on such a huge burden? Their passion that they have for the game and their commitment to devoted fans are driving forces.

“Without fans in our game, we wouldn't be able to play. We don't make enough money to do this for a living. Fans mean everything to us and the league,” said Knighthawks forward Cody Jamieson.

After every home game this season, Knighthawks fans were able to go down on the field and meet the players and get autographs, which helped build to relationship between the two.

The Rochester Knighthawks players and management go out of their way to satisfy their fans and make them feel as if they are part of a big family of lacrosse lovers. General Manager Curt Styres takes pride in keeping the fans of his team happy. Styres has previously given away merchandise at the games, including hats, flashlights, and bobble heads of different players to try to get more people out to the game and show his appreciation of their support for his team. He has also gone as far as paying for a bus to take fans to away games during playoff season. Styres has always treated the fans with respect and has shown that he cares that they are happy and taken care of.

The players feel just as passionately for their fans as Styres does. Fans are the icing on top of the cake at lacrosse games because their loud cheers and applause add to the energetic atmosphere. The support keeps the players working as hard as they can.

“The fans are a huge part of the game, when the atmosphere changes the players respond and feed off of that energy,” said Rochester Knighthawks transition player Joel McCready. 

When the Knighthawks travel to other arenas for games, the environment is completely different than the environment of a home game. The dynamic changes because almost everyone in that arena is rooting against the visiting team. The mindset of the players has to change when they play in a city other than their home. The mentality has to be set differently and the players can’t go into the game hoping to feed off of positive energy.

“Keeping focused on the game is key, and if we let the fans get to us, we tend to play bad. Staying positive as a team is key,” said Knighthawks forward Craig Point. “We worry about on-floor play first and take the crowd out of it by playing our game.”

Fans are able to cheer on their NLL team even if the team is not playing on home turf. The games are always either broadcast on The Lacrosse Network, YouTube or CBS Sports Center. Even if the players cannot hear their fans cheering them on, they can know that many are still watching from the screen at home and get the motivation to push through the game because the fans are still watching them.

Lacrosse is a fast, vigorous, and exciting sport which is what is what draws people to the NLL. It is the most personable sport that really allows fans and athletes to come together and appreciate each other. Take away the large paycheck and what is left is the support and companionship from the fans.

Back-To-Back Titles

        It's official! The Rochester Knighthawks are the the 2013 NLL Champions! 

        The cup will live in Rochester for yet another year and the staff and players could not be more ecstatic. This is the first time in a decade that one team has won the championship two years in a row. The last time was in 2002 and 2003 by the Toronto Rock. 
        
        The Knighthawks started off the scoring just over 3 minutes into the game and never looked back, even as it got nail-bitingly close toward the end of the game with the Stealth trailing by a mere 1 goal. Rochester was on fire for the first half of the game, scoring 10 of the 11 total goals during that time. 

        Did you go back to make sure you read it right? Yes, that's right! 10 out of the 11 goals were scored in the first half of play meaning that the Knighthawks were only able to score one goal for the whole second half! A team only scoring one goal in the second half of play and still winning the game does not happen too often but the team was able to hold of the Stealth.
Thanks to Matt Vinc, who was on fire, they were able to keep the lead throughout the game

        Leading the Knighthawks to the victory was MVP Cody Jamieson, who scooped up the award last year as well. This makes him the second player in NLL history to win back-to-back MVP awards. Jamieson lead the team with 3 goals and 2 assists. He did this all while playing on an injured ankle.

       The win was especially memorable for Dan Dawson who, after 12 years of playing in the NLL, finally has won his championship. When asked how it felt to not only finally have won the cup but have won it playing on the same team as his brother, Dawson said "To win this with him is a little bit extra special, but as far as I'm concerned, I've got 25 brothers in that room."

       What a way to end the season. The Knighthawks got the job done and proved the naysayers wrong. The cup lives in Rochester for another year. Will next year be a three-peat?

        

Confessions of a Beginning Blogger

For anyone thinking about starting a blog of their own, here are some things that I have learned over the past couple months with being new to the blogging world.

• The thing that surprised me most about blogging is that I am making posts that are not required for the class that this blog was intended for. I have started posting for fun.
• For me, the most rewarding thing about blogging is looking at my profile and seeing that people have viewed what I have written. I like that people can see things that I have worked hard to write and perfect.
• The most difficult aspect about blogging for me was deciding how to set it up. Things like what graphics to use and how to put them on the blog took some trial and error.
• My tip for a beginning blogger would be to blog about something you enjoy and have a passion for. You can tell when someone is writing about something they love because the posts are more detailed and thought-out.