HANOVER — The Hanover High boys lacrosse team lost, 17-5, to visiting Champlain Valley Union on Saturday. The Bears played well during the first and fourth quarters but slumped badly during the interstate clash’s middle stanzas, falling to 3-5 this spring.
“We have some guys who are doing a wonderful job, but they lack lacrosse experience,” said eighth-year coach Ryan Gardner. “And when that’s the case, you’re going to see some highs and some lows, and it’s going to take a while until they figure out the game and how to play it the right way.”
Hanover junior Brendan Logan scored four times and Jack Gardner once. Henry Cotter made 11 saves and Jack Gardner scooped up 12 ground balls. The Bears, who graduated their top three scorers and two starting defensemen after last season, won 10 of 23 faceoffs against the Redhawks and at times played woeful defense.
Gardner, not known for his tirades, unleashed a small one after calling a third-quarter timeout. Hanover had just gone down, 11-4, and its back line was fruitlessly chasing opponents around its own end, missing stick checks and allowing attackers to sashay past en route to the net.
“It’s not so much physical effort, but we need real mental focus,” Gardner said. “We haven’t been able to get consistency from what we’re doing in practice and have that happen in a game. I take a lot of that on us as coaches.”
Said senior Dylan Hendrick: “There are definitely some moments that are frustrating and hard to deal with, but it’s fun to see some of these guys improve really quickly. They’re seeing game time that they usually wouldn’t.”
Cotter, a freshman, is facing the expected struggles upon jumping to the varsity level out of junior high. But Hanover is inexperienced almost everywhere on the field, a situation that’s rarely occurred during the program’s previous 30 years.
The Bears have only 28 players and therefore no junior varsity team, so freshmen and sophomores who could have previously developed under less pressure at that level are now trying to advance in varsity play.
Nowhere is that more evident than on defense, where seniors Ethan Derksen, Roan Downard and Seamus Murphy, none of whom started there last spring, are trying to mesh with sophomore George Dominiak and freshman Keegan Murphy.
“When someone steps up to double-team the ball, everyone else has to seamlessly move and rotate,” Gardner said. “It’s a joy to watch when it’s done well, and we did it for three or four minutes in a row a couple of times. But the best units have usually played together for two or three years.”
Hanover won the 2009 NHIAA Division I title and reached the 2012 final. Two seasons ago, it finished strong at that level, but the program’s numbers were dropping and this is its second year in Division II. The Bears were 6-7 last spring and are 3-4 in state games in 2022, and it’s hard to discern exactly why there aren’t more male lacrosse players in the school.
Hanover High’s enrollment downturn, youth and high school baseball’s resurgence in the Dresden School District and the seeming uptick in athletes playing club soccer and ice hockey during the spring are all possible factors. The number of athletic students departing for prep schools also seems to increase every year.
Hendrick and Gardner, the 2019 NHIAA Division I coach of the year, also point to the lost 2020 spring sports season, wiped out by COVID-19 concerns, as a significant reason.
“That really hurt, and the spring sports a bit more than in other seasons,” said Gardner, who recalled a program with as many as 50 participants when he graduated in 1996 and more than 40 during his first seasons as coach. “When kids realize that it’s getting warmer out but they don’t have a sports practice or game to go to, that routine gets interrupted, and not all of them came back the next season.”
Gardner doesn’t worry for the program’s overall future because he believes the Hanover and Norwich youth programs remain strong.
“On a Saturday morning, there are 50 kids out there for the (kindergarten) through second grade team,” the coach said. “If that continues, we’ll be in good shape.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.