A collaborative effort between first-year club teams, Boothbay Region High School and Knox County Lacrosse (Oceanside High School), produced a win of 6-5 over the Camden Hills Regional High School junior varsity boys Thursday May 23.

Both teams hope to become varsity programs. It has been hard work starting up the boys lacrosse team at BRHS and we didn’t have quite as many boys turn out as I had anticipated. Nonetheless, we continued to practice and work on fundamentals of lacrosse. I have a great coaching staff of local guys Paul Roberts and Coast Guard Chief Adam Smart, both former players of the sport.

I also have a well kept secret in assistant coach Dave Hague. Dave has been involved with lacrosse since the age of 5 growing up on Long Island, New York. He’s from Manhasset, New York who started playing in kindergarten through college and then pro leagues. He spent most of his playing career as a midfielder, but also a back-up goalie and a face-off guy. Dave started officiating out of college and retired from the NLL 10 years ago and the NCAA and MLL five years ago. Dave is great and just his presence and wealth of knowledge has given me confidence to coach the team.
It looked like we were going to end our season this week without playing a game as we didn’t have enough kids to field the team and compete. And then I was contacted by Bill Coombs last week about joining them for a game. Bill and his son Thomas started Knox County Lacrosse which are kids who attend Oceanside. Bill’s son Quincy plays for BRHS and lives in Edgecomb. The two teams hadn’t practiced or played together prior and it was also the first game of the season for either club.
Nick Morley contributed one goal, Lucas Hardwick had one goal and an assist, and Hunter Crocker had two goals on the night, including the game winning goal with six seconds left. Oceanside’s Thomas Coombs had two assists and one goal while Jacob Johnson had one goal.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to coach the combined team last night and am happy for all these boys that they finally got to play. The win was that much sweeter!

We’ll be taking on Camden JV again on May 29 and Gray/New Gloucester on the 31st. Games with Lincoln Academy are also in the works. Winslow’s coach, who stayed behind after the Camden vs. Winslow varsity game prior, approached our team about a game with the Winslow JV team as well.