Welcome back returners.

The evening’s schedule looked similar to Monday night:

7:30-7:40 full field three man passing
7:40-7:50 stretching
7:50-8:05 Syracuse stick work
8:05-8:20 Fire 2v1, 3v2, 4v3 ground balls to the cage
8:20-8:45 box 2v2
8:45-8:50 water
8:50-9:30 West Genny

We’ll give a little more detail on those drills later this fall. The idea was again to expose kids who could execute what we wanted. West Genny remains in my mind the best way to identify talent for two reasons.

Number one, the pace of the drill. Due to the confines of the field, decisions must be made at a faster pace.

It’s one thing to carry the ball twenty yards in transition on a full field. It’s a whole different language when you catch an outlet pass carry into the offensive zone ten yards away, there’s a turnover, and you have to sprint back twenty yards and play defense.

Number two, the expectations on offense are sky high. It’s 3 on 2. Sometimes the two defenders are short sticks. Sometimes those two short sticks are attackmen. You have to generate a goal every time. There’s no reason three players shouldn’t be able to carry the ball down the side draw the point man, move it to the trailer, who draws the two, and then bangs it the back side for a one on one with the goalie.

On the offense the only thing you should be worried about during this drill is your goal celebration.

If you can’t take advantage of those chances, you’re not going to be on the field on game day. That’s just cut and dry.

We used the final 20 minutes to narrow down from that group to fill our final spot. Eventually we got to the point where we telling returners to sit shifts out so we could watch kids on the bubble. For my first ever time I think it went very smoothly and no mistakes were made roster wise.

The final roster will be announced later today.

The real work begins Thursday.

Crisp Brine team bag

More Press for IU

Livability.com recently ranked Bloomington the 7th best college town in the country.

Home to the Indiana University Hoosiers, the city of Bloomington offers a Big Ten university with small town charm. Around campus, students can take part in the scene by catching a Hoosier game or biking in the Little 500, the “largest collegiate bike race in the United States.” If sports aren’t for you, there are more than 700 student organizations to choose from, including Greek life. Outside the campus gates Bloomington offers plenty to do, with its own brewery, Upland Brewing Company, and local hot spots like the Bluebird and Kilroy’s Bar and Grill. Bloomington also has an active arts scene, brought to light with the introduction of BEAD, the Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District.

This institution is trying to lead the league in something.

Bonus Press from the Archives

The Wall Street Journal published an article in 2008 regarding the exodus of east coast talent to Indiana University.

Some highlights, which include several great recruiting tips:

As students arrived in the quaint college town last week, there was some low-key clashing of cultures. “It almost feels like something’s not right here. Everyone’s just so friendly,” said Steven Glassman, a 46-year-old attorney from East Hanover, N.J., after kissing his son, Jason, goodbye last Thursday. Mr. Glassman and his wife say the school is “hot” on the East Coast right now — especially among aspiring business students — but will still be a healthy transition for their son, “coming from a city of mean rotten people who will run you over without thinking about it.”

Kevin Mergruen, 48, from Syosset, N.Y., was totally smitten with the school: He returned to the hotel on Thursday decked head-to-toe in bright-red Indiana gear. At the prodding of the high-school guidance counselor, his son chose Indiana for its telecommunications department and plans to minor in music.

Prep-school guidance counselors say Indiana’s longtime admissions director Mary Ellen Anderson set the East Coast influx in motion three years ago when she flew to New York and won over a large group of advisers at a breakfast presentation. She now tries to visit 13 to 15 private high schools in the tri state area each year and has seen a substantial increase in interest from several of them.

As universities across the board have gotten more selective, Indiana has ramped up its marketing efforts to entice students with higher academic profiles to apply. The admissions department this year started sending targeted, personalized notes to desirable students — from postcards promising Indiana will open up a world beyond their hometown to holiday greeting cards with the student’s name written in the snow — and last month ran a half-page ad in the New York Times trumpeting scholarships for eligible New Yorkers. Similar ads will run in other parts of the country as well, says Ms. Anderson.

Indiana was the only school that New Yorker and Dalton graduate Amanda Sidney even considered last year, though she was in a bit of culture shock last week and homesick for Central Park. “I grew up in a place where everyone politically agreed with me — liberal Democrats — so this is a whole new dynamic. It can get annoying, but it makes you think harder,” she says.

To many Midwesterners, all the East Coast kids seem the same. Thursday night at a bar downtown, a Wall Street Journal reporter’s questioning spurred a heated debate between seniors from New York and the Midwest. Rob Morgan, a 22-year-old sports-communications major from Bloomington, wanted to know why the New Yorkers huddled in their regular section of the bar couldn’t “step outside of their comfort zone” or say “excuse me” when they bumped into him. His friend Ryan Leffler of St. Louis complained of girls from New York in skin-tight black pants who thought they were “God’s gift to Earth” and gave him the cold shoulder when he approached them at the bar.

After three years at IU, Samantha Barton hasn’t spent much time outside class socializing with her Midwestern classmates because she thinks they have so little in common. But the Armonk, N.Y., native has also noticed that her Indiana counterparts appear to be more “optimistic” and is beginning to wonder if there’s a link.

“I like when things go my way, and if something bad happens to me I’ll cry all day and I’ll need, like, a Xanax,” she says. As for her classmates from Indiana, she says, “They seem….happier.”

Read the full article here.

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Preview of the cover of the next Lacrosse Magazine.

Raw emotion.

Truth be told he played 2835 times harder for the US than he did for the Cannons and that is fine with me.

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J Biebs yo. You can give a fake birthday. I did.

Weezer, what is going on?

It’s been quite a journey since Pinkerton. That’s fo sho.

Notes

The correct answers to yesterday’s Sports Country questions were, for biggest blood bath: Penn State vs. Alabama, and for brightest future: Matt Leinhart

Cruise ship from hell, key on 0:46 as a bonnie lass careens into a pole

Play for Parkinsons tournament in Virginia featuring UVA, Army, Princeton, and Georgetown

More blogging from the LAS Network: Drofdarb Sports blog