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As many UT co-eds slept in and enjoyed their Monday off on the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday last week, the Texas lacrosse team took to the field and kicked off the spring season with five straight days of practice.
Starting with strength and endurance tests on Monday morning at Clark Field, the prospective future home of Texas lacrosse, and continuing into that evening with a two-hour long practice at Whittaker Fields, the squad got off to a good start.
“We were slow Monday morning and I was worried about the team’s fitness,” said head coach Noah Fink. “But on Monday afternoon the guys showed me they liked to compete and they really hustled in all of our drills.”
Monday’s practice set a precedent for the week: stick work early followed by positional work and then full-field, full-speed drills.
The Texas coaches also revealed their focus for the week— moving the rock quickly after picking up ground balls.
“Sometimes our ball movement wasn’t the best last season,” Fink said. “But we have a very talented squad this year and if we improve the little things we will be very hard to beat.”
Even though it is still very early in the season, by Thursday the team was working on fast-break drills— a sign of their skill and work ethic, Fink said.
And by Friday, as veteran midfielder William Lawson brought out the team’s speaker system to get some tuneskis going, the Longhorns were getting up and down the field in an intersquad scrimmage.
Fink saw some of the intensity drop off during Friday’s scrimmage, but that is to be expected, he said, after five grueling days of hard work. Most of all, coaches noted that they were happy with the team’s attitude.
“As a coach it is truly refreshing to see so many young players stepping up their game as well as returning players beginning to emerge as true leaders,” assistant coach Dennis Rugg said. “I’m looking forward to another solid week of practice coming up.”
The Texas lacrosse team is now in its second week of practice as it prepares for its first scrimmage of the season on Feb. 5 against NCAA Division III opponent Southwestern.
“We have the talent, the work ethic and the vision to do something special this year,” Fink said.
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