2024 Season Summary as of July 16, 2024

1. Saint Edward's finished 8-9 this year.   We had two teams cancel our games with them that were scheduled:

     -Vandermont Academy (Feb 19)

     -Gulliver Prep (Feb 20)

     -Saint Aquinas had to reschedule our game that was originally scheduled for Fri Feb 16, because both of their Girls and 

         Boys soccer teams won playoff games and had to host their FHSAA Regional Final playoffs on their field on Fri Feb 16.

     -We canceled two games, one with Montverde Academy and another with IMG, during the regular season because of illness           and injury to our team at the time.

2. We, by far played the toughest schedule in Florida with a rather short roster.  We played the best teams in Florida as indicated by our MaxPrep strength of schedule:  

FHSAA ALL FLORIDA RANKINGS on July 17, 2024:  Note, The Benjamin School won the FHSAA Class 1A Championship, ended up ranked by MaxPreps as the #1 team in the nation.  They also defeated us in our Class 1A District 8 Final as well as our Regional Semi-Final games.  We showed an ability to hang with them at times, but the combination of our own unforced errors and their forced turnovers created games that eventually led to their ability to put distance between us and them.

3a. Reed Sternberg earned USLacrosse Florida South Academic All-American honors.  

3b. Reed Sternberg also was declared the MVP of the US Lacrosse Hall of Fame 2024 Florida North-South All-American game.4.  The following were selected for the USLacrosse All-Florida South Class 1A Team:

       -Connor O'Brien, 

       -Reed Sternberg, 

       -Harrison Hardin, 

       -Behr Nyman, 

       -Keegan Nyman, 

       -Beckley Waldrop.

5.  Florida Lacrosse Coaches Association All-State Class 1A Selections:

       First Team:       Reed Sternberg (Midfield), Keegan Nyman (FOGO)

       Second Team:  Connor O'Brien (Attack), Will Russell (Attack)

6.  TCPalm All-Area Team (inclusive of Class 1A & Class 2A)

       First Team:       Reed Sternberg (Midfield), Keegan Nyman (FOGO), Connor O'Brien (Attack),

       Second Team:  Will Russell (Attack), Harrison Hardin (Midfield), Beckley Waldrop (Defense), Behr Nyman (LSM)

7. Saint Edward's Boys Lacrosse Season Final Statistics:  

-Coach Bill Keating was instrumental in updating the chart after each and every game, reviewing the game tape to help get the stats as accurate as possible. 

-Dan Steinle and injured varsity players who could not play this season helped keep the books: Ethan Ball, Luke Damiani,  Alex Damournet (Thiney), and Kieran Colgan, who suffered a season ending injury against Jupiter his senior season, helped with the scorebook during the game to compile stats. 

7. MaxPreps Player(s) of the Game Awards:

Regular Season:

vs. Vero Beach (first game):  Reed  Sternberg

vs. Saint John Paul II:             Connor O'Brien 

vs. Saint Thomas Aquinas:    Kieran Colgan  (20 saves)

vs. Martin County:                   Will Russell

vs. Oxbridge Academy:          Keegan Nyman

vs. Benjamin:                           Connor O'Brien

vs. Saint Andrew's:                 Harrison Hardin

vs. Jupiter:                               Behrgan Nyman

vs. Holy Trinity:                        Luke Herrman

vs. Bishop Moore:                   Keegan Nyman

vs. Jensen Beach:                   Keegan Nyman

vs. Viera:                                   Connor O'Brien

vs. Vero Beach:                        Will Russell, Keegan Nyman

District Playoffs:

vs. Jensen Beach:                   Keegan Nyman

vs. Benjamin:                            Keegan Nyman

Regional Playoffs:

vs. Montverde Academy:       Edwin Provancher

vs. Benjamin:                            Keegan Nyman

8.  Pirate Awards:

MVP:              Keegan Nyman

*Keegan played injured the entire season and still dominated the Face-off X against most of his opponents recording a 67% win percentage on 346 attempts.  Keegan was primarily responsible for us winning some close games just because he was dominating at his position.

3D Award (Desire, Determination & Dedication):

7th grade:        Turner Barnett (Attack/Mid)

8th grade:        Chris Campbell (Mid/Attack)

Freshman:       Charlie Corrigan (SSDM) and Behr Nyman (LSM/Close D)

Sophomores:  Connor O'Brien (Attack) and Mark Moore (Close D/LSM) 

Juniors:            Bobby Campbell (SSDM) and Beckley Waldrop (Close D/LSM)

Seniors:            Luke Herrman (Attack) 

I have one other award, and that goes to David Vazquez, Jr., Most Improved.  

Captains for 2025:   Beckley Waldrop, Bobby Campbell, Keegan Nyman, Ethan Ball

All Awards are listed below as of July 16, 2024.

9.  Season recap from Coach Bailey's perspective:

The entire Boys' Lacrosse program had 21 MS players (grades 6th & 7th, with one 8th grader), our 8th grade had 15 players, and our 9th-12th grade had 24 players with a relatively small class of juniors (3, prior to Bobby Campbell joining the team, and considering Ethan Ball was out for the season).

Some of the program decisions this year that Associate Head Coach Jamie Hanford and I discussed and formed this year was that we needed to: 

1. Develop the 8th graders for immediate impact in their freshman year.

2. Give the 6th & 7th graders as much experience as possible in practice as well as games, which meant we needed to exclude the 8th graders but for only the most competitive games.

3. Develop the underlying depth in the 9th/10th grade to make an impact in this season.

4. Have a JV practicing with Varsity to help accomplish that, as well as schedule games for the JV to give players not making an impact at the Varsity level a chance to develop in games for varsity experience later on.

For some players and parents, this created confusion, and sometimes an uneasy feeling about where the players were in their development timeline; however, from a coach's perspective, it was giving players the opportunity not to be over-challenged or under-challenged,  provide game reps for current JV players, and not create a "paralysis of learning" using a more dynamic process, that also was designed to inspire competition among our ranks, with the ability to move up and down the roster (Fluidity).

So that meant, someone had to take on that responsibility.  Since this was our first go-round on this opportunity, I took the step of leading the bridged gap between JV and Varsity players so they had the chance to be successful and develop depth in our varsity roster for later on in the season.  This was made possible because we had Coach Hanford, Barnett, and Greenfield able to work with the varsity players while I started the JV program to accelerate the learning curve of the 8th graders and push the less experienced Upper School players to an impactful place on the varsity, in a defined role.

Mindful of all that, these changes were both very good and, in some instances, not so good.  But patience usually wins the day, I can easily say that the overall benefit to our players of how we started the season ended up a true positive for the entire program, Middle School through Upper School.  It also proved to be important in one other way... I got unusually ill during the season and woke up with pneumonia in the early first part of the season, and although there was no impact on the varsity program with scrambling to cover those bases, forcing Coach Hanford to take on some more responsibilities in the interim.

The Middle School team coached by Todd Fletcher, Austin Schepers, and Joe McAuliffe had a successful season.

The JV team coached with the help of Austin Schepers, and later on, Will Sternberg had some success, ending 3-2 on the season with a nice win over Vero Beach in which Matt Vatland had a big role in dominating the face-off X and playing a bigger role with both offense and defense in that game.  We didn't show for Benjamin, but then again we were 8th grade heavy that game.

The Varsity was put through the early season gauntlet of easily the toughest schedule in Florida and just to make it a little bit harder we were dealing with missing Stone Colgan on defense for the early season till he gained his confidence with his recovery from an injury in the Fall and the loss of depth from starting defender Ethan Ball prior to the season with an injury during his football season.  On top of that, University of Denver commit Keegan Nyman, our FOGO, broke his thumb during the last game of his soccer season (which affected his early face-off play) but was also trying to develop and fit into our offensive group (with a broken thumb) which lead to him getting checked on his same hand and breaking another finger!  

There in lay our biggest gap, finding the 6th man on offense who wasn't just a transfer man or at the very least one that gave us the ability to at least finish.  Frankly, we never really found that player throughout the season (although we were hoping to), and well, consequently, we were playing 5 v 6, and maybe less in most games where we were playing against some stronger teams.  And some of the stronger teams were able to figure it out.  Truly, if our opponent limited Connor O'Brien and Reed Sternberg, you could limit Saint Edward's scoring.  Harrison Hardin came on strong during the Saint Andrew's game and, maybe for the first time, figured out that there is nobody in Florida who can cover him one-on-one!  He gave us a chance to utilize another dodger that might get the SSDM assigned to him because Reed and Connor were getting our opponent's best LSM and Close Defender!    

The Jupiter game came at the worst possible time... after a grueling run through a gauntlet of Florida's best and right before Spring Break, and we caught them just as they were starting to really improve! We lost Kieran Colgan to an ACL tear in this game, and officially, Edwin Provancher began his starting goalie role as a freshman after switching to goalie in his 8th-grade year.  

On the defensive side of the ball, Coach Greenfield was furiously pounding first-time GBs into our SSDMs and Long poles mentality, as well as trying to get them to play not only good on-the-ball defense but complement each other off the ball.  Finally, we came together and began to show serious strides in both man-to-man and zone defensive skills, and believe it or not save Coach Greenfield from a sure heart attack by actually finally getting decent on the ground.  

And as most coaches will tell you, turnovers killed us all season, both unforced errors and forced errors on both ends of the field were devastating to us being able to hang with the big fellows this year.  

We had some very good wins though.   We played Bishop Moore very well and perhaps had our best overall performance of the regular season.  Earlier in our season we gave Saint Andrew's 3 great quarters of lacrosse, and we really hadn't put that kind of performance on the field after that til our contest with Bishop Moore.

Against Montverde Academy in the Regional playoffs, Keegan Nyman and Edwin Provancher both had huge games and somehow, we escaped with the win, scoring 3 goals in 47 minutes, with Chris Campbell (8th grade) adding an insurance goal with 14 seconds remaining on the clock!  Yeah, we won 4-2!  We outshot our opponent mightily during this game, but we could not put the ball on goal, reminding me of the old Lancaster County saying, "We couldn't hit the broad side of a barn door if we tried!"  

But our nemesis and Class 1A District 8 archenemy exploited our shortfalls in all three contests this year. Nevermind that they ended up winning the Class 1A State Championship with a strong offensive group that featured 8 legit dodgers and finishers, a solid and athletic defense, as well as a sophomore goalie who is a converted attackman, who didn't save much in his freshman year but became part of the reason as a sophomore that Benjamin was able to make a very deep playoff run into Championship weekend!

My saying has been, April Matters!  We played deep into April but could not get past May 1st vs Benjamin.  Some great things happened this season as well despite the obstacles:

1. A very young but maturing defensive unit. The defense should be one of our strengths in the Spring of 2025!

2. Keegan Nyman, despite his injuries, was clutch at his FOGO position.  

3. Edwin Provancher, given his level of experience, learned a lot and became a player who can become a difference-maker in the future.

4.  The JV team helped develop both Chris Campbell (8th grade) and Turner Barnett (7th grade) into role players at the Varsity level.

5.  Despite our incredible schedule and short roster in terms of varsity depth, a season-long injury to our FOGO, and the season-ending loss of Kieran Colgan midway through the season, we persevered into the Regional Semi-Final game once again. 

6.  We ended up #16 overall in Florida according to MaxPreps, and #10 in Class 1A, playing a strength of schedule of 24.7, which is the highest rating among Florida. 

Last but not least, Reed Sternberg, Harrison Hardin, Luke Herrman, Will Russell, Stone Colgan, Kieran Colgan, and Luke Damiani, thank you for being part of the varsity program (most of you since ninth grade) and Saint Edward's School.  You may or may not realize how big of an impact this game and your coaches have been in your lives just yet, but you will!  

You have been places no other student-athletes on this campus have been!  FHSAA State Finals weekend and into a FHSAA State Championship Final as well as never having played in anything less than a Regional Semi-Final each and every year of your Upper School experience!