Men's Lacrosse Falls Against RPI in Fall Ball Finale

The St. Michael's College men's lacrosse team traveled to Troy, NY on Saturday, Oct. 23 to face off against the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Engineers.

The teams faced off at 5:30 pm. in RPI's brand new East Campus Athletic Village. Two scrimmages took place throughout the night with both teams putting their 2010 fall ball experience to the test against each other.

The Purple Knights lost the first scrimmage 12-4 however the scoreboard is not indicitive of how the game was played. St. Mikes opened with a two goal lead after Sophomore Attackman Pete Donnally scored twice off of assists from Juniors Max Zuccarini and Andrew Buccellato.

The Knights weren't able to capatalize on the momentum however as they surrendered six straight goals from RPI's high powered offense. The Knights were not able to regain their composure as the final score was 12-4.

Freshman Goalie Theo Furguson got the start in net and played very well. He gave up his duties at halftime to Freshman Chris DeMairo, who also made many key stops. Other positives for the Purple Knights included a good man-down percentage in the first half although there were too many minutes spent in the penalty box.

The two other goals were scored by Buccellato and Marty Vanzo coming off of assists from Nate Etre and Kevin Hunt respectively. Although the Purple Knights were on the losing end of the scoreboard, there are many positives they'll be able to take away from the scrimmage such as knowing that they played hard.

The teams faced off in a second scrimmage with four, 10 minute quarters. The Purple Knights were again on the losing end of a 4-1 game but many young players gained important experience.

Freshman Goalie Andrew Landers played for the first time in net this Fall and had a successful first outing. The defense worked hard and played physical and although the offense was not able to put up many points, there were many good posessions.

This was the second scrimmage of the Fall for the mens' team. Earlier, they were victorious in an exhibition against Bishops University, a Canadian team. The RPI scrimmage marked the end of the 2010 Fall ball schedule for the Purple Knights and they will not return to team action until after Chrismas break. Until then, they will have a workout schedule as well as individual skill sessions.

Baseball: Traditional Purple vs. Gold Weekend Continues

This Sunday, SMC baseball wrote another chapter in the Purple vs. Gold "World Series" tradition. At the end of each fall season, we split the guys into two teams and engage in a best of three series that can be described as spirited and competitive. It also involves a fair amount of artificial trash talking, vocalization of inside jokes, and lots of yelling. As a member of the Gold team this year, I was hoping to extract some revenge over the two game sweep my teammates and I enjoyed last year.

Unfortunately, my fate was the same, as the Gold team lost 2-0 and 7-5 in a long, 14-inning day. However it was a nice way to wrap up the fall season, that was pleasantly productive. The stands and sidelines were spotted with parents that made the trip to watch the games. A special thanks goes out to the Estey family and all the other parents that were involved in bringing the in-between game spread into our lives. Three hours into our day, food was quite necessary.

As Purple emerged victorious once again, our head coach, Paul Morgan, vowed to choose more wisely next year. (He is yet to win a Purple-Gold series yet. Coach Ed Poland has dominated the series). But all in all, you could tell how pleased he and the rest of the coaching staff were to see the progress the team is making.

Now it's on to the offseason for us. Class of 2010 graduate Tony Bonvechio has been awesome in creating a strength and conditioning program that has really brought a different sense of legitimacy to what we do while the snow falls. Just a heads up to the SMC community, we will be selling Super Raffle tickets in the coming months to benefit our annual trip to Florida. The grand prize is two United Airlines flight vouchers and $1,500 in cash. So if you're interested in winning cool stuff and helping us out just hunt down a baseball player. It won't be too hard to find us -- we're pretty loud, and sometimes obnoxious.

Now I'll leave you with a "Yogism" -- the odd ramblings of Hall of Fame catcher, Yogi Berra. This will be a pattern, by the way.

"Half the game is 90% mental."

- Yogi Berra

The Beginnings of the Volleyball Season

THE 2010 ST. MICHAEL'S VOLLEYBALL TEAM!!!! GO KNIGHTS!

As some of you may know, the volleyball season is almost done at this point but, I wanted to tell you

about how pre-season went.

On August 13, I arrived on campus with the rest of the volleyball girls to start our pre-season training. It was a lot of hardwork, sweat, and pain, but there was a lot of fun along with it. We had triple sessions everyday so our life for two weeks was literally just eat, sleep, breathe, and volleyball.

For Volleyball, our pre-season starts before everyone else gets on campus, which was really cool being a freshman because I got used to campus before my fellow classmates arrived. It was also handy that I was moved in before my roommate because it was less cluttered and made it easy for her to move in!

I knew from the very beginning that being on the volleyball team was going to be one of the best things that would happen to me while on campus. All of the girls were really welcoming to the six freshmen and we instantly felt like we were a part of the family. Our head coach, Chris Kilmer, does a great job with the team as he pushed us through all of the difficult workouts as well as promoted team bonding by going camping as well as team dinners with karaoke.

The great thing about St. Mike's athletics is that it communicates very well with the faculty. In being a part of the NE-10 conference, we do a lot of traveling for games, and sometimes that means missing classes. During pre-season, we made letters to our professors to tell them in advance the classes that conflicted with our traveling schedule to make arrangements to make up missed assignments, tests, or quizzes. The faculty is extremely cooperative and appreciative that we acknowledge we are STUDENT-athletes who care about our studies (notice student is first!! you don't pay the money for sports, it's for your education!).

To check out our team roster and team information, go to http://www.smcathletics.com/sports/wvball/2010-11/roster

Hope you enjoyed my blurb on volleyball pre-season! Keep your eye out for more volleyball posts!

-Brianna :)