MAC Bites - #2

Senior captain Jason McDonald will part of a number of collegiate laxers to blog all season for LacrossePlayground.com. Here is his second blog.
Jason McDonald - Sr. - #33 - Defense

Lacrosse Blog #2

“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you decide to get back up” - Vince Lombardi

I believe the true test of a great team is how they respond to adversity. It is not until the chips are down and there doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel, do you see the true colors of a team come out. Obviously last Saturday was a bit of a setback when considering the end result. We had an exciting first half entering the locker room tied at 4-4, but found ourselves up against a wall for the third quarter and ultimately the rest of the game. Unfortunately like in life, it did not end in our favor, but we as a team must move forward. Congratulations to Delaware’s Head Coach Shillinglaw on the 300th win of his career.

Moving forward, we came back on Monday and had a great practice. We all met like usual and waited for the vans to arrive to take us to our indoor practice facility in Pontiac, where we will practice for the remainder of the week. Practice began with the dynamic warm up and then we got right into tight spaces ground balls. The intensity lacked a bit at first due to shaking off all of the traveling this weekend, but quickly picked up as the day went on.

Overall after today’s performance and talking to most of my teammates we are all excited and ready for the short week ahead. We take the field Thursday at Ohio State, who we fought a hard defensive battle with last season. Every year though comes with new challenges as personnel and schemes change, so a continuously changing game plan must be refined and polished as we implement it throughout the rest of the week. We changed some schemes defensively today, which we will continue to adjust and work on and come Thursday, we will be more than ready to execute.

As I mentioned earlier, the week is short so the learning curve and scout must be adjusted as well. We will implement the scout team by Tuesday and go over any adjustments in our meetings that night. We will leave Wednesday night around 7 p.m., for Columbus, where we will spend the night and prepare in the hotel for the showdown the following evening. Things will start to get interesting immediately following the game due to another scheduled match up with a team not needing of mentioning on Sunday in which yet another scout and game plan must be created. It will be quite an exciting few days leading up to next week after which, we embark on a five-week bender on the road coming into conference play.

We’ve approached this season one game at a time and will continue to do so. We’ve learned from our mistakes and improved on what we do best. Thursday is shaping up to be quite an exiting game and we are ready to win.