Daily Archives: July 17, 2008

(From InsideLacrosse.com news article)

Greg Angilly is a former coach at St. Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco and the head coach of the Northwest Regional team at this weekend’s adidas National Lacrosse Classic in Germantown, MD. He will be filing regular reports of the tournament action. For more information about the event, Click Here.

I’ve been extremely anxious to see the brackets for the first ever 16 team regional lacrosse tournament hosted in Maryland July 18-20th. As a New Jersey native, I recognize the hot beds – Baltimore / DC / Long Island / New Jersey – deserve top seeding and I recognize the organizers are going to set the event up so the best 8 teams advance to Sunday’s Elite 8 portion of the event.

In my 6 years of coaching in California I’ve seen the sport grow like a wild fire (perhaps a bad choice of words right now). Gone are the days of having great athletes learning lacrosse – we are now at the point of having some great lax players in this state (Will Yeatman, Parker Brown, Roy Lang, Alex Capretta, Thomas Mattimore, etc). When you add Washington and Oregon, where some high level lacrosse is being played, the Northwest certainly has the potential to become a hot bed.

I’m anxious to end my relatively brief coaching stint with a quality performance in this inaugural event. If nothing else, we collectively hope to show the hot bed area’s that the sport is being honored and played well west of the Mississippi.

Our team is young. Of our 21 boys, 17 of them are underclassmen, rising soph’s and jr’s, many who lack a ton of varsity experience. We should have our hands full but I expect us to play hard and compete in every game.

We are in a four team bracket with the Greensboro regional team along with Long Island and the Baltimore Private school region – SO – Carolina, Long Island and the MIAA. To say we’re excited is an understatement. Little nervous – heck yeah- who wouldn’t be with that schedule.

The rules – we don’t practice as teams until Friday the 17th – so no advantage for anyone. We have a two hour practice on Friday – we’ll be working as team for 90 minutes and then we’re going to scrimmage the Chicago regional team.

Saturday, each team plays the other three teams in their region. We start pool play at 4pm vs Greensboro and then play Long Island at six and Baltimore at eight under the lights. At least they spared the Bay Area boys the heat of a Maryland day – Advantage Nor-West!

Sunday – The top 2 in each bracket advance to quarters / semi’s and finals. The winner of the event will play internationally against Canada for the Brodgen Cup in Orlando, FL.

I suspect we will see a non hotbed team crash the Final Four on Sunday. In group A, I expect the Dallas team to give everyone a good battle. Look for So-Cal to surprise in group B and after my visit to Kent Denver and Ft. Collins this spring as coach of the St Ignatius Wildcats, I’d expect Denver to battle in Group C. That leaves Group D – we certainly have a tough road ahead of us, but don’t write the Nor-Cal and Washington kids off quite yet.