Well summer is here and nothing says summer in Maryland like Hero’s lacrosse and with play in the men’s league getting under way tomorrow night, one team looks to take the summer crown in the men’s league. That team is Team Beej; the team is a combination of club lacrosse players and college varsity players. Most of the players on this team are products of Spalding high school and other MD high schools. Team Beej is coached by Brenden Jones who has spent 3 years as an assistant coach to former Spalding lacrosse head coach Zach Burke. This will be Jones’ first stint as a head coach “I’m very excited to be coaching this team, I learned a lot as an assistant at Spalding and hopefully those lessons that I learned from Coach Burke will pay off with this team,” says Jones, “This team is very talented and the expectations of this team is to compete for the championship this summer. Along with the talent, we have also worked very hard in practice. We had 2 a day practices for the past 2 weeks and because of that both the offense and defense are running on all cylinders. We also have done a lot of running and I don’t expect us to lose a game at all this summer because of conditioning. We had some tough morning practices due to people being hungover, but we were able to work through it. Another plus is that due to having 2 a days this team has become very close to each other and from my experience as a coach, the teams that tend to be close to each other tend to win more games.” Not only is Jones the head coach but he will also be a playing for the team “I think me playing in the games will help out the team a lot because everyone will be able to hear the calls instead of listening for calls from the sideline, that’s a huge advantage we will have over other teams.”
Offense:
On the offensive side of the ball Team Beej will feature two division 1 players in Andrew Scalley and Mike Poiter. Scalley was a key part for the offense of Mount St. Mary’s as he was able to score 3 goals in MSM’s first round loss to UVA. Scalley will once again be one of the go to men on Team Beej “Scalley has a tremendous scoring ability and we will look to use that this whole summer.” Says Coach Jones. When teams start to focus in on Andrew Scalley, Team Beej will then look to Mike Poiter, a player on Maryland’s lacrosse team. “Mike Poiter has a great shot from 10 to 15 yards, it’s almost unstoppable. I think that when you have two key offensive weapons that are pretty hard to stop, your offense becomes very hard to defend because you cannot just double one player then leave the other wide open. Poiter and Scalley will definitely cause problems for opposing defenses.” Says Coach Jones. Coach Jones will also be taking the Princeton offense used in basketball and make it into lacrosse offense “I’ve always been a fan of the Princeton offense and I think that it will work in lacrosse also.” At the faceoff X will be Matt King who will be playing at Salisbury this year. “Matt is one of those faceoff guys that will beat with skill and speed not by power,” Says Coach Jones.
Defense:
On the defensive side of the ball, Team Beej will look to a variety of long polls and short stick d middies starting with Mike Jones aka Short Fat who will anchor the defense. “Mike or Short Fat is a solid defender, he did a great job playing for Maryland club lax this past year and we will definitely put him on the other teams top scorer every week,” Says Jones and asked were the nickname came from for Mike, Jones says “It’s been a joke since high school, we joke cause we love.” Team Beej will feature two great short stick middies in Andy Bieler and Chris Haines. Andy Bieler played club lacrosse at Villanova this past year and uses his speed to defend. “Bieler has great speed and will be useful to create fast break chances” Says Jones, “if the situation comes, Bieler may have to be a full time middie if we need him and that’s a plus to have a defensive short stick middie that can also play offense.” Chris Haines is coming back from a 2 ½ year retirement from lacrosse as he was busy playing Rugby in Europe and for the US national team. “It was apparent during the first few practices that Haines was a little rusty; he also came into camp over weight and has been working on getting back into shape. Despite those two minuses, I really like Chris Haines’ heart. He may not be the best player on the field, but he will out hustle you to every ball and isn’t afraid at all to lay down the wood,” Says Jones. At long stick middie will be Tim Ryan who played his club ball at Notre Dame, “Tim is a great defender and will be seeing a lot of playing time as long stick middie as we don’t have anyone else that can play that position as of right now,” Says Jones. In goal will be Salisbury product Mitch Meredith. “Meredith did not see a lot of action at Salisbury this spring, but he can still can the job done for us this summer.”
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