Nike clothing, a lacrosse roster made up of characters from film and fiction. Edward Cullen didn’t make the cut.

New Nike Team Apparel influences Pitt Lacrosse designs

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LITERARY LACROSSE

For the better part of five years, my EA SPORTS NHL rosters have consisted of 99 overall created players. These players are been from film, books, television, other sports, pop culture and so forth.

I have no idea why or how it started it just did. One day, each roommate created themselves then the next we had teams of make believe characters. Little digital guys with big hearts. One of the roommates was cut out of the league when he created Odie the Dog as a defender. Or because he created one of his competitors’ ex-girlfriends as a defender.

The 2009-2010 NHL campaign  has just begun and Mr. Rabil is leading the Divine Right Knights in goals and points. Obvi

In that tradition 412 Lax created a lacrosse team loaded with talented characters from the world of film and literature. Today we will introduce the defense.

Selecting defenders is a fine art. You want to pick players who are intimidating  and of course talented but more importantly want you people who will get under your opponents skin. After all, it will be the job of your defense to stop your opponent’s offense. As you’ll see later, the offense is generally made of your opponents favorite literary/film characters. Nothing stings more than landing a takeaway or a crushing check with a defender you know your opponent hates.

Goalie

If you are going to stand still while people fire rubber at 100mph at you, you better be crazy.

If you are going to stand still while people fire rubber at 100mph at you while attempting to defend a 6 x 6 goal using nothing more than a fishing net, you better have a short memory, because you will get scored on often.

Who better to be our starting goalie than Leonard (Guy Pearce) from Memento, who suffers from short term memory loss.

Close Defense

According to Quint, the USA close defensive unit was selected due to their largely passive nature resulting in their perceived ability to stay out of the box. International refs are a little soft so by selecting poles that are less likely to throw junk the USA will limit the chances laundry is thrown.

Well, that approach seems visually boring to me.

I want to impose our will on the opposition.

I want an attacking, blood thirsty defense.

Let’s start with the captain of the defense, Hannibal  Lecter. I almost feel bad that our offense would have to work against him in practice. Try picking up a ground ball near this animal.

Should we have to slide, we wanted someone who is harder than a coffin nail. Every attackman knows there’s nothing worse than getting roughed up at practice with a late hit or an obvious slash only to watch that same defender soften up on a coma slide in a game the next day. Our next defender isn’t afraid of contact. Mr. Mickey O’Neil

If you didn’t find the expression at 1:05 to be hilarious, you’re dead.

We have a lights out hitter and our captain who is meaner than 235 junkyard dogs on feeding day. We wanted to add one pole who is going to be able to take the ball away from his attackman like how spending the night at the YMCA takes away a man’s hopes and dreams. And should Lecter go off and kill someone, like a ref, we’ll have an excellent number two man to take over the leadership role. This man has been around the 412 Lax office since 2002 before we knew we had an office.

Mr. William Cutting, affectionately referred to as Bill the Butcher

You better believe he’s getting a video and a photo.

Sidenote: Will Ferrel gave John C. Reily a career.

I expect our defense to hit like this 60% of the time, every time.

One hour before that kid was watching cartoons.

If I got blown up in front of the sideline, my mother would be screaming, “oh my God,” as well.

Or she would have fainted.

Long Stick Middie

These days long stick middies look like they belong on the basketball court in the 3 position.  We wanted a long stick who was a freak on no leash and could throw punishing take away checks all over the field. The God King, Xerxes, has been known to cover some ground. Be serious, are you going after a 50/50 ball if he’s nearby?

Defensive Midfield

D middies are put in a position to fail every time. Their only job is to make sure that when they fail the slide man knows the direction their failure is headed in, right?

Who better to play d middie than a pair of guys that constantly let a small boy run by them? The Wet Bandits.

I doubt we missed someone. But feel free to submit your amendments.

Tomorrow, we’ll feature the top six offensive middies.

USA

Here is video coverage of the USA Scrimmage at Stony Brook.

Highlight packages can be deceiving.

But in this case, every player that was featured, made the team.

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