With a starting line-up that featured three freshmen and five sophomores, Tewksbury High boys lacrosse coach Tom Carpenito had a pretty good idea that he'd be chalking up his team's first few games to a learning experience this season.
And that's pretty much what happened Friday night at Lowell's Cawley Stadium, as the youthful Redmen failed to muster anything consistent in the way of an attack, and lost their season's opener to Lowell High, 10-4.
"We're real young, probably the youngest team in the league," Carpenito said. "So it's going to take a while before we get to where we want to be."
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Freshmen Brandon Hibner, John Aylward and Dan Donovan were in the starting line-up Friday night, along with sophomores Zach Jacobs, Joe DiRusso, Matt Blaisdell, Kyle Pandolph and Matt Donovan. Senior attacker , junior midfielder Sean Foley and senior midfielder Nick LaCascia will be the elder statesmen on the field until seniors Matt Hanafin and (shoulder injury) return to the line-up.
The good news is that most of the younger players have a tremendous amount of playing experience on the youth and club lacrosse levels, as compared to many of the upperclassmen.
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"We've got a great feeder program in town now with Tewksbury Youth Lacrosse, so these younger kids are coming in with a lot of experience," Carpenito said. "In the past, lacrosse was a second or third sport for a lot of our players. But now we're getting players who look at lacrosse as their primary sport and play it year 'round."
As such, Carpenito is finding that his underclassmen are showing up for tryouts with better technical skills and a greater understanding of the game each spring.
"Our lacrosse IQ is pretty strong," Carpenito said. "These kids have played the game a lot and they're playing at pretty high levels. But the challenge for these guys (freshmen and sophomores) is just the physicality of the game."
That fact was clearly evident Friday night, as Lowell's defenders planted Tewksbury's attackers on their backs on several occasions, and refused to give any ground in front of the Red Raider net.
"We got battered around pretty good," Carpenito said. "That's a pretty chippy Lowell team. They were bigger and stronger than us and they used that to their advantage."
The Redmen broke through at times though, as Hibner and Aylward both scored first quarter goals, while Jacobs and Cunha each scored in the third period. But Lowell's attack was much more consistent, and in spite of the efforts of Tewksbury netminder Matt Donovan, the Raiders tallied at least once in every period. Lowell led 7-2 at halftime and 8-4 after three periods.
"We made a lot of basic mistakes and we didn't get a lot of shots," Carpenito said. "But it was our first game, so that's to be expected. We're going to have to build on the good things we did tonight and try to get better."
Unfortunately, the Redmen will have little time to rest as they face Merrimack Valley Conference powerhouse Billerica Saturday afternoon in a rescheduled game that was to have been their season's opener this past Wednesday.
"We're going to have our hands full," Carpenito said. "They (Billerica) have a real strong program. They're as good as it gets in the MVC. I don't see them losing in the league."
