Concord
It’s 45 minutes before the Lebanon High girls lacrosse team’s first game of the 2017 season, and the Raiders are sauntering from the locker room at Bishop Brady High and up a short hill in groups and pairs. Ecker likes to have an hour to warm her team up before contests, but the bus arrived a bit late and now her troops show no urgency whatsoever.
On the other hand, the 23rd-year coach doesn’t want to add to her players’ nerves before the opener. Lebanon’s been practicing almost exclusively in the gym the past three weeks, and there are plenty of girls on the roster who haven’t played in a varsity game. Finally, however, Ecker can take it no more and hollers at the last stragglers to get a move on.
Sophomore Erin White brings up the rear. As her teammates line up two abreast and take off on a warmup lap around Brady’s cow pasture of a field, White walks slowly to the bench, fashionable sunglasses perched on her nose. Days earlier, she came to Ecker asking what she could do to ensure she made the varsity. The coach told her to work harder and stop standing around.
On the bus ride down, Ecker and assistant Sarah Cram discussed how best to treat another player, one who left the program during preseason after missing several practices, but has now returned and will play on the junior varsity. Ecker comes up with the idea of giving the player five pieces of her favorite candy and five pieces of a type she abhors. If the girl is feeling emotionally strong, she can slip a “good” candy to a coach, signaling that she will try her hardest and is willing to be pushed.
If a “bad” candy is handed over, “then we know she’s having a bad day and we know not to get on her,” Ecker says, pointing out that the concept forces the player to ponder whether to use up her de facto free pass. “If she has a bad day and she didn’t let us know, then we can hand her our own piece of bad candy and say she wasn’t being truthful with us.”
The Raiders look like they might all be in need of bad candy early against Brady, which takes a 3-0 lead. The defense struggles, and the offense can’t move the ball down the field. Ecker calls time out midway through the second half to deliver what might seem like an oddly timed message, given that Lebanon has just tied the game at 7-7.
“You guys are playing well but don’t worry about the score,” she says. “Don’t get tense, because there are no expectations.”
There is, however, a hole in the defense.
Starter Anna Wolke, a sophomore and three-sport varsity athlete, left at halftime so she wouldn’t miss a driver’s education session back home. Classmate and fellow defender Libby Stone is impressive in Wolke’s absence, and goaltender Elizabeth Jones is a stalwart with 11 saves, but Brady triumphs, 9-7.
“For our first game, I’m not disappointed,” Ecker says. “We had turnovers, but that happens when you haven’t been practicing on a field and didn’t have any scrimmages before this. I don’t want you to hang your heads. All this does it tell us what we need to work on and, honestly, this sets our expectations a little higher.”
Still, as the bus pulls out of the parking lot, Ecker looks pensive. Her team beat Bishop Brady, 18-7, last spring.
“It’s been a long time since I lost to Brady,” she says. “Years.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.