14 years on..

I picked up my first lacrosse stick back in 1993, when by buddy Jeff dragged me to a practice, ensuring me that I "just have to try this". There I met a man named Mason Goodhand, who put a stick in my hands and threw me into the fire. I've been addicted ever since.

I look back now after 14 years. I've played Midfield, Defense, and Attack, but I pretty much stuck with Midfield. I never really set the world on fire as it were, but I was good with a stick, and always played with a bit of a bull-dog mentality. I focused on off-ball play, groundballs, and faceoffs, so I did 'okay' I think. I played half a game in goal once ages ago out of necessity, but never really got into it.

After all the problems with my neck recently, I thought I'd play in goal and see how I like it. Turns out that I completely missed my true calling all these years! Playing in Goal has been a revelation. Not only am I having more fun with the game than I've had in years, it turns out I'm not half bad at it.

In box I've had a breakout season, with my current save percent jumping to .78 after last night's tough win over the DarkSide (12-8, 4 and 0 baby!). In field, I'm still finding my feet a bit, but I feel like I'm making vast improvements in each game.

I guess the lesson here is that you're never too old to try something new; to put yourself out there. You never know, you just may find you've got what it takes to succeed. But you'll never find out if you never try...

Recently I came across a quote that has struck a deep cord within myself. I'll leave it with you to think on:

"Let me realize... that self-doubt and self-hate are defects of character that hinder my growth"

DBLL Update - Week 4

Can you believe we're four weeks into the DBLL season already??

It's been a turn-around season for my boys in blue. I was elected captain of the 'Thunder' this year, and as such made some changes to the roster during the pre-season draft. It looks like I made some decent decisions as the team is nicely balanced, with a strong defense and great offense. We're going into the week 4 game tomorrow against our biggest season rivals so far, the Darkside. So far, we're 3-0, and if we play as I know we can tomorrow we'll keep an undefeated record.

You can check out the game write-ups and previews on the Dublin Lacrosse website, as well as have a squint at the stats via the DBLL League Stats subsite.

The neck's been feeling pretty good, although I took a big shot off the helmet on Friday playing in (field) goal for Dublin Lacrosse in our win over UCD (9-6). Shook me up a bit, and was feeling a tad light-headed the next day, but that could have just been due to not eating all day.. ;-) I've been fine since, and am planning on seeing the physio later this week for a regular checkup on things.

Summer Rerun?

The weather here has just been so odd. We had a beautiful spring, horribly wet summer, and now it's nice and warm again, like a second summer. What's going on?? I blame Global Warming, or Bertie Ahern (but that's another story)

Anyhoot, not a lot going on here at the moment. Still working my butt off. Thankfully I've got a new guy working with me now to help with the load, which has freed me up to close out a few projects that have been hanging around for a while. I've been doing a couple of interviews lately as well for a couple of very interesting opportunities back in Redmond. They've all gone quite well too, so I'm hoping for some good news within the next week or so..

The DBLL league's off to a great start for my team. I've been elected Captain of the Thunder this year, and was able to make some adjustments to the roster and pick up a couple of new guys in the draft. I think I made some good choices, as the team is really gelling together nicely. We won our first game of the season 9:8, but the real story was this week's 12:5 win over the Storm Troopers. The lads all stepped up, playing tenacious Defense and well-controlled and crisp Offense. I'm having a blast in goal as well, and feel like I'm improving each week. It's going to be a great season for us if we can keep our heads straight and continue the momentum.

Gibby's updated the Dublin Lacrosse site with a nice stats sub-site. Check it out here http://dbll.dublinlacrosse.com/

I attempted to take some pictures during last week's games, but my now-ancient digital camera doesn't handle low light and fast movement well, so they were all rubbish. One of these days I've got to upgrade...