Re­LAX­ing with the New Lacrosse Team

The team’s fear­less leader, Head Coach Phillip New­ton, was hired last year to lead the team in their first sea­son. New­ton was pre­vi­ously an as­sis­tant coach at Lime­stone Col­lege in 2015, where he helped the team win the NCAA DII Na­tional Cham­pi­onship.

As head coach here, New­ton has al­ready worked tire­lessly dur­ing the 2015-2016 aca­d­e­mic year to re­cruit a team of play­ers from across the coun­try and into Canada. “Any­time you are putting a team to­gether and try­ing to get guys on the field, find­ing the right fit cul­tur­ally and chem­istry-wise is im­por­tant. 

Along­side Coach New­ton are as­sis­tant coaches, Mitchell Shafer and Blake Neal were hired to help in this in­au­gural sea­son. Both as­sis­tants have ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence play­ing as well as ex­pe­ri­ence on cham­pi­onship teams. “We are for­tu­nate to have a great staff,” New­ton said. When asked about his as­sis­tants, he added, “They are young, they are hun­gry and they are more than qual­i­fied. They are guys that are go­ing to make us bet­ter and are guys that want to do this for the rest of their lives. The types of guys that you want in your pro­gram and around your guys.”

New­ton ex­pressed that as a coach­ing staff they have in­stilled a motto among the team, “Win the day.” This motto means the coaches want to have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the team, they want the team­mates to have a pos­i­tive im­pact on each other, as well as the com­mu­nity. He says they are, “Great guys that strive to be bet­ter every day and make a dif­fer­ence out in the com­mu­nity.”

Coach New­ton also dis­closed that the team will be launch­ing a “Lacrosse 101” course for Maryville stu­dents to teach the es­sen­tials of lacrosse later this se­mes­ter. The course will help stu­dents to get to know with the team, coach­ing staff and the game it­self. New­ton hopes that the course will help stu­dents to have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the game, as well as get them ex­cited for the sea­son as it quickly ap­proaches.

Start­ing a new sea­son is ex­cit­ing, and Tris­tan Snell­grove, ju­nior, can­not wait to show the Maryville com­mu­nity what lacrosse is all about. Ac­cord­ing to Snell­grove the team “re­ally jells to­gether,” and he is “ex­cited to start a new pro­gram with all of the guys.” His hopes for the sea­son in­clude start­ing off strong and “get­ting to the au­to­matic cham­pi­onship game and com­ing away with a win.” Snell­grove de­scribes lacrosse as a mix be­tween foot­ball, hockey and soc­cer, with the de­fen­sive and of­fen­sive schemes of bas­ket­ball. “We hope that the com­mu­nity sup­ports the team, just as we will sup­port the other teams through­out the year,” Snell­grove said.

 

 

All pho­tos cour­tesy of Jor­dan Coker.