Throwback: Today's guys/ Retro Gear

Casey Powell

I grew up when the game was played with bucket helmets and arm pads you either strapped on, or the pull-on type that would undoubtedly get loose, and you'd have to tape them. Wear them one summer practice, they'd still be wet with sweat for the next. My gloves (usually Brine L35) had the palms cut out, and I'd sneak a couple fingers out every now and then for a better grip on the stick. My sticks were STX--SAMs and Excaliburs and Laser Hi-walls. I didn't like the little nubs on the Brine SLIIs and Superlight 4s that your sidewall would string through--they'd crack off from the rest of the head (when hit with the ball or a check), and you'd have to tape the sidewall string to the head. In high school, I wore the double chin pad, because, well, coolness.

Most of my sticks were traditionally strung. Jim Ulman (UVA) was my favorite retailer. He strung his traditional pocket with nylons in place of the leathers and used hard plastic sleeves to protect them at the of the head where they'd scrape the ground on groundballs. I usually used a wooden pole.

I was in high school when the titanium shaft first came out. In college everyone transitioned from the bucket to the first iteration of the non-paneled helmets you see today. (Actually, in ten grade we used the Riddell--basically a batting helmet with a facemask--awful. My coach knew times were about to change, he just jumped the gun, backed the wrong horse. We sent them down to the JV team the next season). As a coach, I picked up an offset head and was amazed at how easy it made shooting the ball and keeping the ball. It used to take rare skill to cradle at one's ankles Jeff Long (IC head coach) was is so skilled he could probably toe drag using a tennis racket), but now, with these sticks, every fifth grader can do it.

Point is, things change, but there's always a loving pull from the past. So I drew some of my favorite current stars of the MLL as they might have looked in 70's/80's/90's.

Kyle Harrison



Greg Beast Gurenlian

See more illustrations here



Long live the bucket helmet

My most vivid memory of attending the lacrosse final four come from an era when Hopkins and Syracuse were the giants of the college game. I was there for the 1983 Syracuse comeback to defeat the Jays 17-16, and I was at Delaware, sitting in the end zone at halftime in 1984 as Blue Jays headed to the locker room with a  "Remember the Alamo!" feel. Not content with a halftime lead, they spoke of 1983, and implored each other to keep the lead this day.

I still picture the Hopkins teams from the 1980’s taking the field for pre-game warm-ups in helmet, gloves, and gray half-shirts. After warm-ups, they’d return to locker-room to don the rest of their equipment and jerseys.

While we gain an appreciation for tradition and become more sentimental as we age, as a child I knew the Hopkins helmets were iconic, timeless symbols. Love the Jays, or not, those black helmets with alternating white and Columbia blue panels were amazing. And, they never changed...

...until technology erased the traditional form of the lacrosse helmet. No more panels. No more strings to "cut to." And now teams have multiple helmet design each season, not one design for multiple decades.

Long before LaxWorld came to Towson, my father would pick out his wooden crosse from Bacharach-Rasin. I wore an old youth Bacharach helmet for summer ball when I was in high school--neglecting any safety recommendations--which was great (it slipped on like a baseball cap), until a hit popped the chinstrap off and my front teeth went through my upper lip. (I came jogging off the field with a warm sensation on my chin and throat and dripping down my chest—my coach took one look and said I better head to the ER. Then he added, “You’ll have to wear a mustache the rest of your life to cover that up.” –thankfully that wasn’t true, the stitches healed up well.)

I miss you, Bacharach-Rasin. 

www.jimfenzel.com

At Homewood Field (pinball youth lax at the Lacrosse International)

The sport would be there

That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

                                                                -Tennyson

The late spring is littered with college lacrosse seniors whose journeys ended before Memorial Day Monday, whose last college game was a bitter defeat. And if that game was the last competitive one they’ll play, the question of how to apply the lessons learned from a life of athletics to life after athletics remains.

As a player, as a coach, now a parent, I’ve always seen sports as a metaphor, as a training ground for life. But there are distinct differences. New athletic seasons always came as the calendar rolled on. Even if you got injured or if you faced disappointment, there was another chance coming. Sure, you had to choose to put in the work (or not), to train (or not), to get better (or not), but the season was coming regardless. The sport would be there.

And in your choosing to hit the wall, run those hills, do work in the weight room, you got to play. In high school, in college, you got to have a calling beyond the classroom; you got to define yourself as a student-athlete. But now, perhaps, for all intents and purposes, it’s over. Instead of being part of that team next season, you’re on your own pal. So what lessons do you take from that metaphor that is sports?

Some may bring a win at all costs attitude to the work place, and will thrive on the competition to be better, make more money, close more deals than the next guy. As my bank account will attest, I’ve never been that type.

My application of the sport metaphor to real life centers on wisdom and morality. The Headmaster at the school where I once taught, once opened a speech saying:

I have always admired an essay by Robert Frost that introduces his 1939 volume of poems. "The figure of a poem," he writes, "must begin in delight and end in wisdom. The same is true for love."
Let's borrow that sentence and try it out for education. "Education must begin in delight and end in wisdom."

I’ll borrow further for sports (though I view teaching and coaching as one; sports is education).

For a child, as winter melts into muddy spring, there is such joy just to pick up a stick and play.  As you grow in the game, you have the opportunity to grow mentally in its ins and outs, schemes, and theories. You learn basic tenets: keep a high crease when the ball is behind, low when up top; attack the seams of a zone; change planes on your shot. As you become wiser, you are even allowed to challenge those firmly held, passed down beliefs. When is it okay to feed the crease from up top? What if we set a pick where we’ve always known not to? And then you are not just learning the game, but analyzing it, perhaps innovating it. The opportunity for wisdom comes once you know and master all the “rules”, once you’ve studied the precedents of past players and the tendencies of present opponents.

The process of finding wisdom is the first thing to take from sports and apply elsewhere. Before you were wise enough and skilled enough to, on a righty dodge down the alley, shoot not off the goalie’s hip, but stick it in the top corner over his near-side shoulder, you logged hours and hours on the wall and on the goal. The delight that only got more intense as you got better can be found in mastering other skills beyond lacrosse.

In a future post, I’ll address the morality athletics can give. 

www.jimfenzel.com

*Quote from Vance Wilson, Headmaster, St. Albans School, DC

Dave Urick

There are people in my life that I will forever call “Coach.” Some I played for, some I coached alongside, some I only watched (from near or afar). It is a term of respect with sincerity unmatched by other titles in my vocabulary. I might nervously utter “Your Excellency”, “Your Honor”, even “Your Air-ness” with awe, but absent the gratitude and depth of feeling with which I call a man or woman, “Coach.”

A coach is a teacher, a mentor, a motivator, a leader. The ones I’ve loved most possessed a humble, self-deprecating manner that made me as a player think it was my smarts and my strategy out there on the field, unaware of their ever-present guidance. To coach well is not a light job; the hours spent at practice are dwarfed by the hours spent off the field. As a young coach, I was eager to display my lacrosse IQ. But that’s not the role. It’s not what you know, but whether you can impart that information, inspire, and ignite a passion in others, even if they might not realize until years later, if ever, the extent of their Coach’s dedication and direction.

I was fortunate to play for Dave Urick. Coach U is the humblest of men and the most decent of men. He urged all his players to give back to the game that had given them so much, and his is a legacy so vast that lacrosse across the country and beyond will forever be cared for by men who played for Coach U, and in turn by those who played for these men and got their Urick-isms secondhand.

My current contribution to the game is my art. This piece, of Hobart players from Dave’s coaching tenure there painted on the field against Georgetown players from his decades there, is an anachronistic fantasy. Depicted are men who perhaps played before the competitor painted next to them ever held a stick. It is a tribute to the man shown on both those sidelines. And behind him, seen and unseen, rows and rows deep, are all of us who played for him.

The original (Acrylic on board, 18x36) is for Coach. But prints are available FRAMED here: https://www.levelframes.com/limited/dju

or unframed here:http://bit.ly/URICK

Here's a short video with a bit of the process:

a whole career in a dodge

The inspiration for this piece was to capture a player’s –in this case Josh Dennis—career in the progression of a single dodge. The painting technique meant to invoke movement, and be abstract enough for the non-literal nature of the work. The uniforms depicted connote years of practice, play, effort, but the entirety of the painting invokes the brevity of any sports career.The painting relies on images from the past, but in merging several past points, it attempts to move out of time.

 Josh’s playing days ended too early (no MLL in those days, and a knee injury at Team USA try-outs), but even longevity in athletics is brief in a lifespan. 

I used acrylic paint (I enjoy the colors and the clean-up), but experimented with some acrylic retarder and other mediums to extend the drying time and allow more blending on the canvas itself.

Greasers, Shiners: Make the balls awful, and when they whine make them worse

On the elliptical machine at the gym this morning (that's not endorsement; if you're young (or old) with working knees then jump, run, and play—but I’m hobbled and possess limited fitness options) I paused to watch just a moment of Belichick's press conference. I don't care much about the ball-deflating-controversy other than feeling everyone should just use the same damn ball. But what I did hear him say before moving on is that in practice he makes the balls as bad as possible. Wet, cold, slippery, whatever. And if the players complain, he makes them worse. And that brings me to lacrosse:

Greasers, shiners, slicks, slimers, whatever your name for them is, lacrosse balls are tacky and clean for only a short span, and then they get slick and slippery.

Playing in elementary school through high school (in central New York), I never thought much about it. A lacrosse ball was a lacrosse ball. Some were heavy, some were slick, some were dead, some filthy, some had chips removed by lawn mowers. Every once in a great while you got your pocket on a new, clean, bouncy, grippy ball. But it didn’t last. Even our game balls weren’t fresh out of the box, they were just the best of the bad.

Shooting in the back yard, at the high school, or up on Cornell’s Schoellkopf field, what I wanted more than new balls, was just more balls. Quantity, baby. Retrieving an errant shot from the woods, but finding three other balls half buried in mud, hidden in moldy leaves, frozen in ice, or sitting in puddles was great. (Up at Schoellkopf, either on the wrong end of the fence or buried in snow banks that lined the field until about April, we found the best quality—left behind by a college team with a bigger ball budget than mine). My goal was always to leave the field with a heavier backpack than I’d arrived with.

In my pocket as I cradled I could sense the quality of the ball. As it came off my shooting strings I was still adjusting my throw or shot to control a slippery or heavy ball. Sometimes they got away from me. At college, the balls were better, but they still got old. I don’t recall any players removing slick balls from play.

And then I became a coach, and encountered just that.

I don’t recall specifically the details (but I believe there were Alford brothers involved, perhaps a Polk). The players would pull greasers out of the ball bag and set them aside as unworthy of play.

I couldn’t believe it. I understood that new balls were nice, but for that to be the expectation!? What happened if the ball had a piece of mud clinging to it in a game? Could you just hold your hand up, pause the action, take out a towel and wipe it clean, maybe wipe down the pocket of your stick too? What a crazy, country-club mentality. This isn’t golf. (Still don’t understand how SI or other publications could name a golfer or a horse sportsman of the year)

Should I ever become a coach again, the Belichick tactic is one I’ll employ. Make practice uncomfortable and difficult. Put in more obstacles than they’ll face in the game. Make the balls awful, and when they whine make them worse. But maybe, just maybe, give them the new, clean, tacky balls every once in a while. 

Side note: When I was in high school, I played on turf perhaps once a season. The daily grind was done on a well-worn grass field, dusty and hard in sun and soggy and muddy after a rain (or after the snow melted). Balls got beat up, fast. Now everyone has field-turf, balls rarely see mud, never mind sit caked in it day after day. (Don’t even get me started on the lost art of picking up groundballs in high clumped grass, or mud puddles). Lacrosse is spring, and spring is “mud-luscious”. I miss the mud, I miss greasers, I’m getting old.

jimfenzel.com

The Journey is all

Something has switched for me. Instead of trying to squeeze in daily (or almost daily) exercise, I am back to training. I’ve circled a marathon date on my calendar, now instead of working toward some ambiguous level of overall fitness, I have a specific goal. A goal that requires a significant voyage of preparation, some pain, ups, downs, and many, many miles.

(Me, my mom, my brother after Chicago 2002--if you see the '94 in the lower right it's because my mom didn't know how to set up her camera)

In 2002, I ran a decent marathon. (Now, 2002 doesn’t seem long ago to me; I’m 40. But In 2002, Paul Rabil was in high school, Bill Tierney still had 7 seasons left at Princeton). I ran 3:11:05 in Chicago that year (7:17 to 7:18 pace for 26.2 miles). The Boston cut-off was 3:10:59. I missed by six seconds.

Over the next year, my focus was those six seconds as I trained for the Philadelphia marathon. I wanted to get back to those last miles—put myself in the same place on the same pace at mile 24, but then grind out just six more seconds.

In hindsight, that focus was wrong. Each marathon, each athletic season is its own journey. Past success can influence future success but doesn’t guarantee you will find yourself in a similar situation. In preparation for Chicago every day was about the entirety of the marathon. For Philly, it was narrowed to 6 seconds, and I lost track of the whole 26.2 miles.

I recall reading an article by Mark Rippetoe that Greg Gurenlian had linked to on twitter. Mark was reviewing CrossFit, while discussing the difference between exercise and training, he wrote:

Exercise is fun today. Well, it may not be fun, but you've convinced yourself to do it today because you perceive that the effect you produce today is of benefit to you today…

In contrast, Training is about the process you undertake to generate a specific result later, maybe much later, the workouts of which are merely the constituents of the process. Training may even involve a light day that you perceive to be a waste of time if you only consider today.

Training also gives your mind the joy of purpose. Training looks at a goal and creates a voyage. As C.P. Cavafy writes in his oft-quoted poem (if you haven’t read it in its entirety, google it and get to it):

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

One journey you might have before you right now is this (fast approaching) season. If your destination is a league title, state championship, Memorial Day weekend, remember that it doesn’t come, doesn’t exist without the trip. The teammates beside you, the groundball scuffles, man up/man down competitions, bus rides, wall ball, all that is the journey and the journey is all.

“Keep Ithaka always in your mind”

jimfenzel.com