Over the summer, Blake Harlow wanted a chance to test himself against the very best when he joined his club lacrosse team at a camp at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Wilsonville High School senior Blake Harlow (right) signs his letter of intent to play lacrosse for Mesa State College of Colorado with Wilsonville boys lacrosse coach Dave Sanford.
With lacrosse being one of the more popular sports on the East coast, the Wilsonville High School senior didn’t know whether he belonged yet coming from the West coast, where lacrosse is slowly developing.
And he got his answer.
“I was looking at them to see if these guys are legitimately better than all of us and as a team, some of them are just because they click better,” Harlow said. “But as individual skills, I didn’t see any of them that would come here and immediately be all-stars.”
That confidence parlayed him into several offers from colleges for visits, and last week, Harlow signed his letter of intent to play for Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colo., of NCAA Division II next season.
“It’s pretty exciting,” said Harlow, 18. “It’s a rare opportunity, especially for a guy from Oregon to go even Division III, so Division II is really cool to be able to go even that high of a level of play.”
After making previous visits to Rutgers and Sonoma State University in California, Harlow said when he paid a trip to Mesa State, it felt just right for him.
He met his fellow recruits and they immediately bonded with one another, and Mesa State coach AJ Stevens was there to greet him at the airport upon his arrival.
“That was a pretty big (reason) right there,” Harlow said. “I wanted to make sure that I could live with the coach the next four years and when I met him, he was a really cool guy and I said I could definitely do this for four years.”
Mesa State will enter next season as a first-year varsity program at the NCAA Division II level, which also intrigued Harlow.
“It was definitely a cool feeling to know that we’re going to be the first (class),” he said. “I was excited because we could set all of the traditions, we get to set all of the standards.”
While the team’s opening season could be rough from the get-go, Harlow said he was encouraged by Stevens’ words that they will grow together to become a respectable program out of the gates.
“We have the element of surprise and he wants us to come in to win every game obviously,” Harlow said. “He’s excited. He thinks we have as much potential as any of the other well-established Division II programs. It’s just a matter of us taking it into our hands and saying let’s do it.”
Harlow began playing lacrosse in eighth grade but a broken collarbone suffered from snowboarding cut short his season.
But he returned to play for Wilsonville as a freshman and fell in the love with the sport after getting to meet and play with several graduates who were a part of the first league championship team two seasons ago.
“I’ve been motivated since freshman year in the spring,” he said. “I’ve been playing lacrosse non-stop.”
Harlow, who was one of the Wildcats’ team captains as a junior last season and an all-state honorable mention on defense, said he is looking forward to the upcoming spring season.
He added that he wants to leave a legacy that Wilsonville is more than just a program that won one league title behind a talented senior class in 2008.
“I was thinking about two (seasons) ago when we played in our league and how every game was 16-3, 15-5, games like that,” Harlow said. “We definitely have high expectations to win every league game and then we also play out of league rivals and games with West Linn. Our goal this year is to not be remembered anymore as a team that had a couple good seniors two years ago. We want to be remembered as a good program and I think this year we can establish that.”
http://www.wilsonvillespokesman.com/news/2009/December/09/Sports_Local.sports/
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