Friends Boys Hope to Return to Lacrosse Playoffs

The return to the sidelines this season for Friends School head varsity lacrosse coach is a good feeling for the current teacher, former upper school administrator and former athletic director at the Charles Street school.

“It became increasingly difficult to balance AD (athletic director) with a varsity-level job, so I took time off, not really wanting to,” Jon Garman said in an early March interview.

Garman, who coached the school’s lacrosse team from 1985 until 1999, found he really missed coaching lacrosse, so he and fellow teacher Rich Seiler coached the junior varsity last year.

“It’s good to be back and it’s great to have Rich,” Garman said of his colleague, who is also a former head lacrosse coach at the school. “And we have two other coaches—one is a parent who has helped out the last couple of years and one is actually a former Park guy who helped me out in the '90s.

“So we have a terrific staff and we have a great group of enthusiastic kids,” he said.

The Quakers are returning 16 players from last season, where they posted an 8-8 record in the MIAA B conference, then dropped a quarterfinal-round playoff game to Annapolis Christian High School.

“This team lost a couple of games by two goals and ended up falling down in the standings, and it was a shame, because this team beat almost everybody last year," Garman said. “They had a good season but just a couple of losses— it was so competitive, it bumped them down a little bit.”

Yet Garman feels the team will return to the playoffs this year.

“We think with a really good face-off game and a really good close defense, we can go far,” Garman said. “How far? We don’t know, but this is a good group of kids; they’ve shown the ability to work hard and absorb what we are talking about, so we have pretty high expectations.”

Seniors Jon Schmidt, Matt Collins and Michael John form the core of what Garman says could be “one of the strongest defenses we’ve had in the last decade at this school."

“They are all really good athletes and they all have excellent stick work, so the strength of this team is those three seniors,” Garman said.

“All of them are repeating varsity players—all of them are tremendous,” he said. “It seems like everybody in the B conference has a good attack, so it’s a good thing we have this close defense.”

The Quaker attack returns senior Jack Gibb.

“We look to him to be the leader in the offensive end of the field,” Garman said.

Paul Orrson, a junior, and senior Michael Rudow will form the nucleus of the midfields. “We look to Paul to be a really top-notch midfielder,” Garman said.  Rudow was a “terrific” face-off guy as a junior.

“I would say those six guys, we’re really counting on to do a lot,” Garman said.

The head coach noted the team has plenty of other players who are important, too.

While attack may be the least experienced part of the team, Garman said two returning juniors, Dave Magdeburger and Mike Sweet, got good playing minutes last year.

When looking at goalie, Garman said it is “very much up in the air,” with one returning and one coming up from JV. J.D. Robinson, the returner, had a lot of minutes last year. “He’s not the every day, every play goalie from last year, but he has good experience,” Garman said.

Garman expects the B conference to be a toss-up this season.

“There is way more parity now than there used to be. John Carroll has really been the dominant team over the last seven, eight years,” he said, yet noted Park, Pallotti and Archbishop Curley have each won a title in recent years, and Glenelg County School has been in the finals.

“John Carroll—until somebody beats them, they’re the defending champions— but I think virtually everybody in there ... there are no gimmies,” Garman said.  “There are no off days in the A conference, there are no days off in the B conference lacrosse either.”