Lebanon natives Jake Dulac and Mike Fleury and Newbury, N.H., native Nick Spaulding helped the New Hampton School’s boys lacrosse team win the Lakes Region League championship, 14-5, against Brewster Academy on Saturday, capping the Huskies’ second consecutive undefeated campaign.
“It’s been a great experience,” said Dulac, who started playing lacrosse in fifth grade with Lebanon’s youth programs before entering the New Hampshire prep school as a sophomore in 2015. “I knew we were going to be good; I just didn’t know it was going to be this good. We’ve been winning a lot of games.”
The Huskies finished the spring 14-0, outscoring opponents 190-55 along the way. The championship win was New Hampton’s third in a row. Dulac, a longstick midfielder and quarterback with New Hampton’s football team, hasn’t lost a game with the Huskies boys lacrosse in two seasons. Fleury, playing attack for lacrosse as well as center and defensive tackle for football, was reinvigorated after one season with Husky boys lacrosse head coach Justin Simon.
It took some time for Fleury to get used to the increased speed, size and competition at the prep school level. Simon, Fleury said, took extra time after practice to teach him to use his size as an advantage.
“Coach Simon, he’s an unreal coach,” Fleury said in a phone interview on Monday. “In the past, lacrosse was just a way to run around and stay in shape. Over the winter, I played indoor lacrosse. He kind of brought me in and taught me a ton of different things.”
Dulac said he’s also learned a lot both on and off the field not only by being coached by Simon, but by playing at such a high level.
“The competition is very high,” he said. “There are a lot of people going on to play in college.”
Oxbow Baseball, Softball Get Scoreboards: Oxbow High’s baseball and softball diamonds have never had scoreboards, at least not that Olympian athletic director Brianne Barnes knows of. Until now, that is, thanks to a donation from Alson Perry and the installation work from Jason Fornwalt at Fornwalt Excavation.
Barnes said the scoreboards, currently running by a generator, should be 100 percent working within the next week. “The weather this spring hasn’t been very cooperative to run electricity out to the scoreboards yet,” she added.
The donation was given in March and installation began in the first week of May.
“It’s huge,” Barnes said. “It makes a world of difference. People walk by, they have to ask someone in the dugout or a parent paying attention to the runs being scored. It’s just a lot more convenient.”
Perry could not be reached for comment on Monday. Barnes didn’t disclose the cost of Oxbow’s new scoreboards, which set up in the outfields of the school’s adjacent baseball and softball diamonds.
The scoreboards are just one several recent upgrades to the fields, including new clay in the infields. Dugouts on the baseball field were also repainted purple during community service day at the school.
Lucke Presents Helmet Sensor Findings: Hartford High linebacker Matthew Lucke’s senior project to study the severity of head impacts on himself and 11 teammates during the 2016 football season didn’t exactly produce the broad results he was looking for.
“I didn’t really collect as much data as I would have liked,” Lucke said during the presentation of his senior project at Hartford High’s auditorium on Sunday. “I had a lot of issues with the sensor.”
Issues with the Shockbox Football Sensor, purchased for $180 each with a grant from the Byrne Foundation, included batteries that wouldn’t charge, a weak signal and connection with the mobile phone application that was supposed to measure hits in real time, and sensors — attached via a Velcro strip — that fell out of helmets during games and practices.
The result was a much smaller sample size of information than Lucke would have liked. The initial study called for countless data entries from 12 of Lucke’s teammates playing different positions, measured during games and practices during the season. In the end, the Hartford senior managed to get only 255 data points from five teammates.
Seventeen impacts Lucke measured were calculated to be hard enough to possibly cause a concussion, one of which, he said, was a diagnosed concussion.
“I was hoping to get some data from the company so that I could make some comparisons, but they didn’t really have what I was looking for,” Lucke said on Sunday.
Lucke added that he took a lot away from his project, including writing grant applications and talking to sales representatives.
“I also thought it was cool to experience some self-driven learning,” he said. “Learning and researching because I wanted to, not just because I had to, was a cool thing. Normally I just do it because I have to.
“I like sports a lot,” Lucke added. “I like watching them and participating in them. I wanted to form my own educative opinion on something in the sports world. Head injuries are a pretty big topic right now.”
Local Skiers Named to All-State Nordic Team: Ford Sayre Academy skiers Greta Bolinger, Hannah Chipman, Kennedy Lange, Perrin Milliken, Timothy Cunningham and Adam Glueck were named to the New Hampshire Nordic Coaches Association’s all-state high school Nordic ski team last week.
Milliken, from Norwich, finished the season ranked 21st in the Eastern Cup point rankings and placed as high as 19th at the NENSA Eastern Cup at Rikert Nordic Center on Jan. 28. Bolinger finished 34th overall in the girls 5K at Cheri Walsh Eastern Cup and Zak Cup at Holderness and seventh in the Eastern Cup U16 girls 5K on Jan. 18.
Adam Glueck, of Hanover, finished second in the Eastern Cup point rankings and finished sixth overall, first among U18/U20 skiers, at the Eastern Cup 5K race at Quarry Road on Jan. 18
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.