Groundballs are the Spirit of Lacrosse

I wasn’t the fastest kid on the field—a middle of the pack sprinter. I wasn’t overly physical.

Yet I had a knack for groundballs.

Toeing the line before a coach’s whistle commenced a one-on-one groundball, my stomach would flutter. If I got a good jump, I could use what Coach Urick once referred to as: my “rather large hind quarters” to block out and scoop the ball. If, as was quite likely, I was beaten to the ball, the poke check on the back hand (catching the glove solidly, or the exposed wrist) was my best friend. My competitor would scoop right over the ball, over run it, and there I’d be. And even if he gained possession, it was never over until his pass made to the coach’s stick. While one-on-one groundball drills made me nervous, I loved being in that middle line for the two-on-one GB. It was a satisfying experience to scoop that ball, return to line, and listen to the coach chew out the other two.

As a grade-schooler, a few times I won the camp-wide groundball contests at Gilman lacrosse camp and Bob Scott’s lacrosse camp. As a high school attackman I’d annually win the Hoover Award for most groundballs.

I have memories, even from my earliest playing days of existing outside a scrum of players, and waiting, anticipating as the others slashed and body-checked and the ball got batted about.

My dad was a coach, so of course he stressed groundballs. He even innovated this little contraption:

When I needed a theme for a painting depicting the “Spirit of the Game”, my mind was locked on groundballs.

The painting depicts players from disparate generations and a ball, a loose ball. And the desire in each of these men to get to it, to get low (backhand down) to scoop through and endure the coming hacks to their forearms, that is the spirit of this game.


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