The PNCLL at the 2008 MCLA National Championships in Dallas

[Kyle Berggren]

Now I can laugh... At first, you were asked the circumstances of the goal... You couldn't recall. Now, after reviewing the film, I'm outlandish (go figure) & his actions were BS, you were condemning them all game.

If it was upseting for you to watch, I'm shocked you don't remember it now. I've coached for quite a while, & while I remember some great plays, I remember the bad ones, & I remember the conversations I've had with my guys about them. I won't defend them by saying they did BS things "all weekend," please keep in mind, this was the first game "all weekend." It also wasn't until the fourth quarter that the behind the back shots started coming in flurries.

While I applaud you sticking up for your player, you weren't willing to answer the questions when they were asked very simply... I wouldn't let the subject drop because it's an ongoing problem I've seen with this player in '08, now you know the specifics... Not 24 hours after it happened, but about a week. This would have died if you'd acknowledge it as a problem, but you tried to sweep it under the rug. Just like when you stood next to boo'ing players during awards. You may not like what I have to say, but I'm not making things up, these are facts. Less than 10 feet away from you, you laugh, not correct your players behavior. I'm done with it, good luck with your team in the future.

[Buc_em_up]

I didn't see this game, but in some respects I think that, in a tourney and esp. in the 1st round, a team needs be running it's offense in preparation for the next games. Take the example of Duke running up the score on Ohio State on sunday. I'm sure that they didn't WANT to win by a ton of goals but it is detrimental to the team to pass up looks if they are getting them.

I saw plenty of less classy things go on should be being addressed in terms of taunting and bad/late hits. One instance was an attackman who had a 1 on 0 taking his hand off of his stick, slowing down and pointing at the goalie before he scored. that sort of cockyness is uncalled for, nevermind the late crosscheck in the back later committed by the same guy...

I hate to see that sort of thing way more than a score get out of hand *If the looks keep coming*. I didnt see the game so I cant say but if there are constant iso that is a whole other story...

[Bnizzy#30]

Season is over with...

I can only hope your views on our players and team are changed by next season.

[Gvlax]

We had an awesome time watching you guys play. Great job on making it to the final game. Did #21 enjoy his birthday song? We were sitting by his sister and she asked us to sing it for him.

HAHA im sure no one rejected when she asked you guys to do that. Yeah Max liked it, he enjoyed his goal, but from what i remember he was serving a penalty when you guys were singing. Not sure if my memory was right. Im sure he would have loved it more if we would have won. Thanks again.

[Tyler Baumann]

Season is over with...

I can only hope your views on our players and team are changed by next season.

Is this Ben?

[Tyler Baumann]

I didn't see this game, but in some respects I think that, in a tourney and esp. in the 1st round, a team needs be running it's offense in preparation for the next games. Take the example of Duke running up the score on Ohio State on sunday. I'm sure that they didn't WANT to win by a ton of goals but it is detrimental to the team to pass up looks if they are getting them.

I saw plenty of less classy things go on should be being addressed in terms of taunting and bad/late hits. One instance was an attackman who had a 1 on 0 taking his hand off of his stick, slowing down and pointing at the goalie before he scored. that sort of cockyness is uncalled for, nevermind the late crosscheck in the back later committed by the same guy...

I hate to see that sort of thing way more than a score get out of hand *If the looks keep coming*. I didnt see the game so I cant say but if there are constant iso that is a whole other story...

Pointing at the goalie before he scored? I saw Owen Nolan do that in the 98 NHL allstar game, on a breakaway right before roofing it on Hasek. It was pretty classless and he ended up getting a nice punch to the side of the head later on in the game.

[Tim Whitehead]

Congrats to both SFU and WOU on good showings at the tournament and on great seasons in general. I'm really looking forward to seeing what SFU can do next year. With no seniors on the team this year, and the freshmen I'm assuming Brent and Jeff are bringing in next year, I think this is a team that can definitely compete for the title next year. Great season, guys, and build on this for next year.

After the earlier posts, I thought SFU didn't need seniors. The Michigan coach attributed their improvement this year to the strong senior class. So this means 2010 could be big for SFU if they can keep all those sophomores together.

Now its wait till next year.
Go Ducks

My response of :

Good thing SFU had all those seniors this year!

was a reply to your post of:

While it is interesting to speculate about the reasons behind players not returning, the real point of Thrilla's list was that Oregon was a relatively young, inexperienced team. Really different from 2007 when there was a large core group of seniors who played the whole season, avoided injuries for the most part and took Oregon to the championship round.

I never said that SFU didn't need seniors or experience. I was just trying to imply that I think using Oregon's "young, inexperienced team" as an excuse for not winning the league was pretty weak, considering that SFU didn't have a single senior on the roster.

[onpoint]

For what it's worth, Simon Fraser was my favorite team at the tourney. They just couldn't quite get it done vs. BYU in a very entertaining game. That being said, I'm sorry, but Manning was not on the level of Plonkey or even Dallas Hartley from Sonoma (2000). I think he is a very good player and likely has more all-around skill as a short stick, etc., but in terms of a dominating long pole presence, I have to stick with the old school on this one for now. This is not to bag on him as a player at all because he is an important part of that team's success and I think he is one of the better ones at our level right now, but not at the all-time great level.

I like SFU being back in the mix of things, that's for sure. They play the game hard and with passion. I found myself pulling for them vs. BYU for some reason . . .

[AndyP]

fair enough alex. but considering it's the first time in his life he's played with a long-pole, he's still pretty good.

[woulax23]

**just as a warning this is a long post and if you have no interest in the DII or some of the more recent commentary on this thread then you probably don't need to read this.**
In reference to my teammate and fellow attackman scoring with ten seconds left in the Harding game it is just something that happened. I should also probably mention that we had not heard a count down at that point and even I had no idea how close to the end we were. Our coaches were definitely not encouraging us to push the ball or put up as many as we could against Harding. The reason we were all in the game still simply comes down to bench size. Some of you might see this as an excuse,but I hope that my personal character still holds a little bit of weight, even if WOU's character doesn't. This was our team for all three of our games in Dallas.

Starters
Calvin Davis - Attack
Nick Addington - Attack
Josh Butterwegge - attack
Ian Bohince - Middie
Matt Frutiger - Middie
Kacey Bicking - Middie
Justin Brown - Defense
Luke Rein - Defense
Jamin Pool - Defense
Steve Blair - Goalie

Subs
Brandon Benfield - Middie
Kyle McWhirter - Middie
Daniel Lindsey - Middie
Kenneth Dickens - Defense
Ben Roberts - Defense
Adam Ditter - LPM

Injured
Anthony Harmon

We only had Ian doing face-offs, something that should be evident in the fact that I don't think he scored in the entire tournament, because he was barely able to run due to his hamstring injury from our PNCLL Championship game. That left us with 3 short sticks to rotate in on the offensive side of the ball. Our starting defenders were pulled to allow younger players in later in the game and the only option for us would have been to have those defenders grab up short sticks and come onto the field to try and score on offense. Our coaches did not do this, to save their legs for an even more important game against Westminster the next day. That left our attack and middies all on the field for the entire game. I would have much rather been able to take the time off and rest for the next day, but it was not really an option.

As for Cal's behind the back shots..... He did try it two times and I am pretty sure that it was in large part due to the defender guarding him. In the fourth quarter Harding's coaches put one of their best offensive middies out on the field with a long pole to play defense only, not LPM, just defense. All of our attack heard him say something to the effect of, "if we are not going to win then we are going to hurt them. I want them to feel pain every time they get the ball." He came out swinging and was repeatedly warned about keeping his checks away from our helmets and under control. After a couple minutes of that I personally got pretty fed up with getting slashed by him and I am sure that Addi and Cal did also. I am not condoning anything, I am simply explaining that I'm pretty sure that is why Cal got a little more "creative" with his shot selection while being guarded by that particular player.

As to this game having any ill-will or negativity from Harding towards us or the PNCLL, I am not sure who felt that way. I know that my d-pole and I made fun of Cal and laughed at him after he tried to score behind the back and Cal himself looked at the two of us and said "yeah that was a stupid shot, I need to quit acting like an idiot." Even the Harding goalie joked with him about it. All of us on the attack side got along pretty well with the Harding D and their goalie through just chatting while the ball was on the other side. In fact I'm proud to say that in the 3d quarter one of Harding's middies took a hard underhand shot to the cup and two or three of WOU's players, myself included, gave up on the ground ball so that we could get the referees attention and stop play because we were genuinely worried about him and the refs did not seem like they were going to blow the play dead. It was also a WOU player who came all the way from our own sidelines and brought that middie a bottle of water while he was being looked at by the trainers. We saw him later in the week and joked with him and his teammates about it after he was feeling better.

There is room for any team to be called unclassy if we are all being truly honest about oursleves because almost every team has that one hot-head or flashy player. Westminster had most of their offensive starters in the entire game and in fact Roman Schowe, Westminny's highest scorer, put one in on us behind the back late in the game when we were well out of it. They also lit up Matt Frutiger while he was in the middle of subbing out and stood over him taunting while Matt was rolling on the ground on his back in pain. I have not seen a post about them being unclassy for still putting up points late in our game, and frankly I wouldn't expect one. They were making a statement in that game that they were way better than us and they wanted to do that by putting up a lot of goals. We were not upset about it because that is the game. We were in Nationals and we did not stop fighting for a single second of that game, so I have would not have expected them to. We did not want their "B" game at any point. I would have been more pissed that they were babying us in the end if they had quit playing hard.

I have not once raised my voice to call another program unclassy in the PNCLL, and I probably never will. This includes in my first season when I heard players on the sideline and on the field of our play-off game, in which we were severely beaten, saying "let's get the score up to twenty, push the ball!", or when we had 24 put up on us last year and some of the other players started chanting "youtube!!!" (which was pretty humorous now when I look back on it), or when I was crosschecked in the throat in our championship game and then the defender proceeded to get a conduct penalty for telling me to get used to that type of hit and being on the ground the rest of the game, or having a defender throw down his stick and take a fifteen yard sprint at me and truck me from behind after the play was already blown dead. No one from WOU ever got online and crucified entire programs for being unclassy because of the actions of a couple of guys.

The reason is because we are all kind of the same when it comes down to it. We are young, competitive males who have testosterone flowing through our entire bodies, and when we go out on the field it is easy to get caught up in the heat of the game. For some it is easier to control then for others, but I don't think that makes a program as a whole bad. I have no problem with any of the programs in the PNCLL, including any of the ones I mentioned above (p.s. I wasn't trying to single people out and I love this kind of competitive nature!!!! I was just using some examples). I know that when I see those kind of things it is because those guys are competing, they are trying to show that they are better than the other team. That is what the game is about at our level, coming out and proving that your team is better. I think my whole point can be summed up in one situation. After our play-off game against SOU last season, a game that I was afraid was on the verge of becoming an all out brawl at some points, I walked up to Tyler Baumann and I said "hey man, sorry about getting into it so bad with you out there" to which he replied, "It's not a big deal, we are all just our there fired up and competing and things happen. No worries." I don't like SOU because they have become our rivals, however I still respect the fact that off the field their players and coaches are good guys and if we can get our two programs to get over each other's on-field problems then I think we should all be able to get past a lot of things.

Finally, as to our team's conduct at the awards ceremony in Missoula I can tell everyone that the entire team got a very severe piece of my mind for how we conducted ourselves as a group, and certain individuals were also reprimanded and dealt with when we got back to WOU. That is a legitimate reason to call out a program and I was pretty upset at us, as players and representatives of our team and school, and I let my team know that I felt that way as a senior and captain. It's hard when guys may feel like a teammate may have deserved different recognition than they received, however it is not acceptable to make another player feel like they are not deserving of the award they are receiving. Especially when that player did not ask for the recognition in the first place and it was given to them by others. I hope that my younger teammates learned a lesson in how upset some of us were at our actions and I would like to assume that sort of display is never made by another player wearing a WOU jersey.

I hope I have not offended anyone in the PNCLL with this post, I just wanted to clear the air about some things and I am not trying to pick a forum fight with anyone. I think I am still just a little upset at the fact that we lost the way we did, and then I had to explain to some of my guys and parents why our coaches were having to defend our team to our own conference while we were on the other side of the country trying to rep. the PNCLL. Hopefully we can all get over some of this stuff and celebrate another successful and great PNCLL season. Congratulations to SFU on your trip to Dallas!!! To WWU, we gave Harding hell for you because they came out talking like they had no respect for the PNCLL and we know that you guys are 5 times the team they were this year and you deserved a spot in the tournament way more than some of the other teams down there.

Josh Butterwegge
Western Oregon University Lacrosse Team
2008 Captain and President

P.S. Good job to all receiving all-american honors for both Divisions!!!! It was cool to be able to cheer on those receiving accolades while they were announced in Texas Stadium, and I only wish that you could have all been there to hear your names being called. All of you seniors who received this honor, I hope you are proud of yourselves, because it is the culmination of four years of hard work for many of you.

P.P.S. *Edited for ex-Raider and current MLL prospect Mr. Baumann and our DII Coach of the Year*

[TheBearcatHimself]

Josh, great post, I would recommend paragraph breaks though

I think it is a crucial point that the people "calling out" WOU have been PNCLLers, and not Harding players or other teams at the tournament. There may be some hard feelings from the regular season or past seasons, I don't know, but if Harding isn't saying diddly, then there probly wasn't that big of a problem.

I also think it is crucial to understand that all teams have players who have performed classless acts on the lacrosse field, in fact there are players who perform classless acts in all sports. If a player does something like point at a goalie, or shoot behind the back with a big lead, I think that is an internal issue. In no way does it affect how my guys or any other team's guys should play the game, because we should be telling them that is how it shouldn't be done. If we don't control it then we are bad coaches, period.

It is funny how such a small thing as a late goal gets WOU crucified, but as Josh said no other program has been cast under such a harsh light of criticism. I can name players who have cheap-shotted me and my fellow players from EVERY SINGLE PNCLL PROGRAM. And you know what else?? There are Willamette players who have had dirty cheap shots as well on every team out there. This isn't news, it's just sports. It's up to the coaches and administrators to control and spread the game positively. Goals with 10 seconds left happen, the world is still spinning last time I checked.

[Tyler Baumann]

Josh how many times do I have to tell you it is Baumann not Bauman! Anyways I do agree and I do remember talking to you after the game. I was glad we did cause you and I seem to be pretty nuts during games and I thought we were going to have a WWF match at midfield at some points in that game.....I like that we were both able to leave it on the field and when the horn was blown it was over. I grew up playing hockey and moved to Alaska to play my last year in bantam, we fought a lot, we fought in practice, we fought in games, but off the ice those guys were my best friends. In lacrosse there isn't as much in college, but quite a bit in the MLL (I saw fights break out when I was at training camp with the Machine and Riptide last month) It's just the way it goes, but after practice those guys were completely fine with each other and acted like nothing even happened. Sports just make some guys crazy, but if it's left on the field it's all good in my opinion. I do agree about cheap shots from every team, I know I accounted for quite a few of them myself......not that I wanted to really hurt someone just that sometimes you boil over. I play attack and have taken quite a few of them myself in games and practice from my man Snell, but I don't hate the guys for it.

[Hi-Line Lax]

lots of chatter on here since I last checked this thread... too much driving to Texas and back, next year I'll fly.

Great post Josh and nice follow ups Mark, your side of the story from Texas rings very true. I thought WOU had a pretty good first tournament run and that they learned a lot. I was trying to be just a fan this weekend, but was constantly reminded of my first trip to Nationals when I watched them... they really took in the whole weekend and were great representatives of the league (not quite as good at heckling Westminny's goalie as UNC was last year, but pretty good fans overall). I think people might be blowing their antics a little out of proportion, so let's just put that to rest... season's over. The PNCLL 2 remains to be a force in the tourney, having either won or been eliminated by the eventual champion in every D2 tourney so far... no shame in that.

Congrats to all the guys who made All-Tourney and All-America, well deserved. I had a blast cheering for you guys in Texas.

My special shout out would go to Townsend Hall... a 4 time 1st Team All-Conference & 4 time All-America selection, a completely selfless player who also defines clutch, a beast on the field and a class act off the field, a good friend and a great teammate... thanks for the memories brother.

[nhoskins]

lots of chatter on here since I last checked this thread... too much driving to Texas and back, next year I'll fly.

And here was Ilooking to carpool with you guys!

[woulax23]

Nate,
hopefully next year you can fly down there with the entire Griz team for some Dallas action..... or possibly even as a coach with your BSU program . Here's to hoping that the parity of the PNCLL in both divisions keeps raising and that we continue to be on of the best conferences in the country.

Anyways I do agree and I do remember talking to you after the game. I was glad we did cause you and I seem to be pretty nuts during games and I thought we were going to have a WWF match at midfield at some points in that game.....

word.... I was really worried about approaching you after the game... which is why I chose the weeney way out and talked to you when you were with a family member or something and my mom was standing next to me, so I could almost ensure we would both be on good behavior.

* As a little side note, I am the only WOU player to ever score behind the back in actual game play (despite Cal's attempts and a personal guarantee by the great Kyle McWhirter that he would finish his career with at least one) and it came as my last career goal and the last goal of WOU's 2008 season Even then Coach Haner and Coach Homma gave me an ear full for not just putting it away overhand to ensure a goal in a game against UCSC that was closer than we thought it would be. Hopefully Chris will put it into our UCSC highlight clip on youtube, which nobody seems to like but everyone seems to watch

By the way Jason, I would have loved to spend some time at d-pole in our last game, as I have continually raved in practice for the last 4 years about how i can play defense and no one ever takes me seriously (despite me stripping Harding's best offensive player when I had to go back on middie d at one point in our game and getting the gb), but Steve would have flipped out the minute I got beat and he got scored on.... sadly I lived my college career as a lowly attackman. Hopefully I can join Kyle Berggren in what ever it is that ex-PNCLL attackman do.....