A SALUTE - By: Dan Freshman
Remember that kid who you just hated in high school?
Not the kid who had B.O. in gym class after square dancing, or the football player who was on a few too many horse tranquilizers in introductory pre-calc class, or the banjo player with a slight hump on his neck and seemed to wear the same mangy black hooded sweatshirt every day. There was someone else, someone so irritating, so ball-busting, so trifling, so malevolently callous and supercilious that he/she actually had the audacity to use "supercilious" in everyday speech.
Nah bro, it wasn't the lax brah. We're "good" people.
It was that kid who rode the Beamer to school, the one mom paid for and insisted they get the deluxe luxury package with the gold tailpipe and Peruvian leather seats. The same kid already had relationships with every teacher he had well before he ever entered a classroom, because pop was on the school board, defended them successfully in an alimony lawsuit or donated the entire east wing.
This kid rocked no flow, but all the girls (or guys) thought he/she had insane dangle—because of their $340 Gucci sunglasses and $250 limited edition bushwhacker jeans. This kid had the wallet stacked full of 20's but never lent out a dime when someone was in need.
And if you went to high school in the past five years, this kid probably was in all of the advanced placement classes and scored a 504 plan so he/she'd get double time on all standardized and school examinations. And this kid was one with the sheet of crib notes poking out of the strategically-torn hole in his designer jeans, the same one he'd take out during the tests without the teacher noticing.
Yet when school ended, the kid received his/her choice of Ivy League school, while the same kid just a few letters down the alphabet with the exact same grades and activities couldn't cut a break from Johnson County Community College. That kid right now is either a lawyer at the most prestigious law firm in your metro area, or better yet, he/she's still freeloading off ma and pa's trust fund.
Do you all know the kid now? Good. Pissed off enough? Good. Want to perform dozens of Rabil swim dodges over said kid right now? Me too.
But funny enough, in the lacrosse world, that kid is Johns Hopkins. Think about it: the fancy, formal name. Not John Hopkins. Johns Hopkins. The lush, enclosed country club of a home, surrounded by a city that is absolute filth and scum. The swarm of medical school students. The storied history, both on the lacrosse field and in general.
The way it always gets ranked in the top five come preseason. The way it always skids during the regular season yet never leaves the top ten. The way it always ends up in the NCAA championship game, no matter how many tournament teams it lost to in the regular season. The way it tends to beat the heavy favorite come tournament time, apparently killing out the clock and reducing a high-powered offense to merely harmless.
To many, Hopkins seems like the ideal team to hate, the program that can draw the ire of any young, contemporary fan. And fittingly, they were booed in and out of Gillette Stadium this past weekend. When Duke was on the field, the fans became Blue Devils. When the Orange did the same, the crowd was bleached in orange.
And after this weekend, as a bitter columnist, cynic and detester of all that is privileged, haughty and classless, I only have one thing to say to yet another edition of these Blue Jays:
Thank you for being the classiest and most respectable players Final Four weekend.
Thank you for pulling off one of the greatest upsets in NCAA history, holding a team with the NCAA’s all-time point leader, the NCAA’s all-time goal scorer and high school’s all-time point scorer to single digit goals for the first time this season, making a painfully simple defensive change, pushing out players to the alleys, yet wreaking havoc on one of the most decorated offenses in NCAA history.
Thank you for telling a group of fifth-year seniors that an NCAA championship isn’t entitled, that tradition and character will overcome flash and hype.
Thank you for fielding the true best player in the country and giving him the ball at will, giving fans one of the best performances all-time by a midfielder in a championship game.
Thank you for giving us dozens of Chuck Norris-style hyperboles for a certain man-child of a player.
Thank you for limiting the best face-off man in the country to 50 percent on draws.
Thank you for having your sophomore goaltender, a player everyone chided two months ago as unready and mediocre, give fans one of the best performances ever by a goaltender in a championship game.
Thank you for being the only team that pushed in its chairs after the press conference.
Thank you for your candor.
Thank you for giving us an answer after the game that didn’t consist of, “we just did our thing.”
Thank you for having the best coach in the NCAA tell us he was “humbled” by the effort his players exerted.
Thank you for telling us about the camouflage wristbands the captains bought and the entire team and coaching staff was obligated to wear after your five-game losing streak. Thank you for telling us how the wristbands had no words on it, but merely signified that the team had a mission, and it was done “talking.”
Thank you for telling us about the story of Michael Gvozden so candidly, a player who was a “happy-go-lucky” kid who would speak to Dave Pietramala’s wife for hours about his prom date after he was recruited. But when the season began, he tried to assume a hardened identity as a staunch leader. When he floundered, Pietramala pulled Gvozden aside and asked “who” he was. Gvozden said he was a “happy-go-lucky” kid. Pietramala responded by saying, “I haven’t seen that kid in weeks.”
Thank you for staying on your side of the field and giving the losing team its space when it lost.
But most of all, thank you for what you didn’t do this weekend, and what other teams did.
Thank you for not screaming in the faces of another team as you ran off the field into the Gillette Stadium concourse, just before that team was about to play its game.
Thank you for not hooting or hollering as you entered the press conference room, playing with the microphone or letting out profanities.
Thank you for not lashing out at a press member to the point your coach needed to restrain you.
Thank you for not hanging out in the hallway and flaunting your win while the other team was just 20 feet away in the adjacent locker room.
Thank you for not circling around the stadium and ending up just 10 feet away from the losing team, still heartbroken from losing on Memorial Day Weekend.
But most of all, thank you for giving us two of the best semifinal and championship games in NCAA lacrosse history, in a brand new venue in dire need of better ticket sales next year.
And lastly, thank you for showing us it’s cool to be a Blue Jay fan again.
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