When UVA is on the docket, neither wind, sleet or snow will stop the Heels from preparation. OK, so I’m being a little over dramatic as I write this before I go to bed. But, after a sunny practice yesterday, today was a cold rainy mess.

For the first time this semester, I went back in the weight room with the team. They have typically been lifting in the morning, so I’ve been missing their lift sessions. I have to say, after being sick of them last semester, I was happy to be in there for something a little different.

When the team came back to the locker room from the weight room, they found new sticks waiting for them. The sticks are Carolina Blue and I think that they are from the Mikey Powell line (Grant Zimmerman thought so too – they only had a logo and no writing to confirm this). The sticks will be welcome when the team takes the field to take on UVA Saturday on a nationally televised game.

What I learned today:

• I learned from Michael B. Burns more about the reasoning of putting long poles with shorts on the wings before faceoff, or vice versa, or having the same size sticks match-up.
• I learned from team manager Yu Katoku that in Japan, ties are settled by playing rock, paper, scissors, instead of overtime due to the lack of fields and playing time. (those crazy kids)
• I learned that Kevin Piegare seems to think he can keep the duplex clean when he moves in there as a sophomore. Time will tell.
• I learned from Matthias McCall that the grass that collects around the spikes of your cleats when the ground is wet is called “scrom dog”.
• I learned that Sean Jackson doesn’t always get his appetizer.
• I learned that Cryder DiPietro and Michael Jarvis couldn’t touch their toes when stretching if their life depended on it. The downside of being tall I guess.
• I learned that even when talking about lacrosse sticks, if Bobby McAuley asks if you want his shaft, say ‘no’.

The team began practice with a film session before heading out to the field. Assistant coach Paradine manned a Mac Book Pro (Mac snob alert! — I was happy to see a Windows computer was eschewed in lieu of the better computer. Alert over) and showed some clips of UVA to the team while coaches Haus and Lattimore made commentary as necessary. Afterwards, we headed out to practice on what was a beautiful North Carolina day. There is not much that I can say about practice, but I did learn some new things about the nuances of lacrosse:

• Chris Cortina taught me how extra-man offense, and man-down defense team members are picked. It was something I’ve always wondered.
• I learned from Jamie Locke and Andrew Moss that goal keepers are susceptible to getting their thumbs jammed, and it is common for goal keepers to have messed-up thumbs.
• I learned that Nina Walker reads my blogs! Huzzah!

This weekend I posted a couple blog posts to Inside Lacrosse about UNC’s trip to Johns Hopkins. Here are links to those two posts:

Day 1: Road trip up to Baltimore

Day 2: Game day at Johns Hopkins

I will be riding the bus up with the team tomorrow as they head to take on Johns Hopkins for a Saturday match-up.  My hope is to post some photos Friday night (if I have Internet access) after our trip up there.

Mostly likely I will post on the blogs on Inside Lacrosse.

“Forget the Big Ten, we share the same dry cleaners… There is no other area like this. It produces things, situations, feelings that you can’t talk to other people about. Because they have no understanding of it.” — Duke Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski

With their proximity, and the high-caliber athletics program found at both schools, the rivalry between the schools is so intense, that those who did not graduate from either school, or is a fan of either school, will never be able to understand

exactly what the rivalry is about, just as Coach Krzyzewski said. Fans love to hate schools that are good. But when two schools are next door to each other, and both are so good, the hate comes easy. Just how good are the schools athletically? The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Cup (formerly the “Sears Cup”) ranks schools based on athletic performance, specifically national rankings in the individual sports. In 2006-2007, North Carolina was ranked #3 and Duke #11 nationally in those rankings. Recently, Stack Magazine created their “Elite 50” rankings that ranked schools on a formula based on athletic and academic performance. In that ranking, UNC was #1 and Duke #5. Obviously, these are two high-quality schools sharing the same dry cleaners. Read the rest of this entry »

The Heels had another one of those close games, running up the score in the first half, then keeping the crowd (and a photographer) on the edge of their seats in the second half. Those on the edge of their seat risked being blown off in the gale-filled game. The temperature was in the 50′s, but felt much colder with the wind howling the entire game. But the Heels held on to win 8-6, on the back of 5 goal performance from junior Ben Hunt.

Here are photos of UNC lacrosse v. Notre Dame.

I have finally posted photos from North Carolina Lacrosse vs. Cornell from last Saturday. My week has been packed with work and I had not had time to post these.This win was a huge win for the program. First, Cornell was in the quarterfinals, loosing by one to Duke. Second, the Tar Heels shaked a hex that had been on the team. Many times before, the Heels built a large lead quickly, only to fall in the end. Saturday, the Heels built a huge lead quickly, only to see it get etched away by the Big Red. This game however, the Heels kept their heads about them and won in a convincing 13-8 game. (Had the Heels not had 3 defense guys out in the final seconds, it could have been 13-7).

Earlier I wrote that one of the elements that makes visually lacrosse compelling to photograph is the equipment. The lacrosse stick is obviously the first piece of equipment to comes to fans minds. When it came to stringing, I think I came in with the assumption to most lacrosse players strung their own sticks. Back when I was in college, I worked for the company that owns Great Atlantic Lacrosse as a call center customer rep. Brian Mehm, who’s brother Kevin was playing at UNC at the time, worked there also and I remember him working in the corner stringing sticks. People who did not know how to string sticks would order them from Great Atlantic.

I assumed though that these were younger players who had not learned how to string sticks yet. I’ve learned though that even at the college level, most players still don’t string their own sticks. Instead, there are a select (and highly in demand) few who have the expertise and experience to be a stick stringer. So these players often find their time spent stringing sticks for their teammates, trying to get them as close as possible to the specs that their teammate wants. On Carolina’s team, those players are Gavin Petracca (Pops), Michael J. Burns (Jersey Mike) and Kevin Federico (K-Fed).

I thought that getting photos of a player stringing a stick would make for darn interesting photography. A few weeks ago I got up with Pops at his place and got some nice stuff of him stringing a stick for Jack Ryan. Tonight I headed a few doors down from Pops’ pad to “the duplex” to get some photos of Jersey Mike in action who was stringing a stick for Joe Howard. I learned a few tricks that Mike uses to mold the mesh to just the right shape.

While trying to get some photos of Jersey Mike, competing for my attention was Callie, Kerry McCormick’s new puppy who like to be the center of attention. (He also like to sleep in my jacket for some reason). Hope you enjoy these two preview photos from my days with Pops and Jersey Mike. I’m of course, holding on my best photos for later. Gotta give you something to look forward to! Hopefully photos of K-Fed to come sometime soon.

I now have photos from UNC’s 15-2 win over Bellarmine posted. Here is the link for those interested.My advance apologies to Cryder for posting the photo on the left; but you got to admit, it’s funny. He was busted for an illegal stick but it didn’t matter too much. Even with the 3:00 penalty Bellarmine still could not score.Also, I have a post on Inside Lacrosse’s blog about the behind the scenes I covered over the week. Here is a link to that post.

At long last, the home opener. At 55 degrees, Fetzer Field and nearby Koskinen Stadium undoubtedly had the best weather in the nation for all the NCAA D1 programs opening their lacrosse program today.Normally for a 1pm game, I would get to Fetzer at around 12:15. But with my project, covering “behind-the-scenes” requires me to arrive much earlier. I aimed to be at the locker room at 11:00am so I left my house at around 10:40; my hope was to beat the team to the locker room.Halfway on my way to Chapel Hill though, I came to the last-minute realization that parking was going to be more problematic than I thought. Today at 1pm, not only was the UNC lacrosse team playing, but the men’s basketball team was also playing a home game. I’ve known that basketball and lacrosse would conflict for a long time, but it never dawned on me that parking would be tight. (Normally for basketball I’m spoiled with press parking so I don’t have to worry about it).

The parking difficulties threw out my idea of parking at Kenan Stadium where the locker room is. Instead, I had to park at Fetzer Field and make the walk to Kenan Stadium. I thought for sure that the extra time required to walk from Fetzer to the locker room would put me way past 11am and half the guys would be there before I was. Thankfully though, it all worked out as I beat everyone but the coaches there. Even better, I was able to get a some nice photos of the freshly-folded white jerseys laying on the stools that awaited the players as they walked in.This was the first time these jerseys have been laid out for the players. In the past, it’s been practice jerseys. If I was a freshman, I have to imagine that walking in, finding the jersey on my stool then holding it in my hands would be a particularly emotional moment.

More emotion though filled the locker room when the young children of Rip Davy, an All-American at UNC who passed away about one-month ago, came to visit the players in the locker room. Coach Haus introduce the team to the two young men, Will and Brooks, and challenged the team to win today’s game for them and show them what UNC lacrosse is about.The team did just that, winning 15-2, which included a 14-o scoring rampage. At one point, UNC was down 1-2, but just exploded offensively and defensively. Included in that 14-0 scoring run was a 3-minute period when the Heels were down a man for a stick penalty. But even a man down for 3 minutes, the Heels were still not scored on. Shane Walterhoefer won 12:18 of his faceoffs; Mike Burns won both of his. Sean Delaney had 4 point (2 G and 2 A).

Next weekend the Heels are heading to Denver. I had hoped to go, but there are so many things going on that weekend for me that I can’t travel. I will be photographing Duke lacrosse for Inside Lacrosse Saturday and UNC Basketball on Sunday.