Alonso Miller, a Ball State University Graduate and Westfield 7/8 coach, has been involved in Indiana lacrosse for several years. Coach Miller recently travelled to Manchester, England to participate in the 2010 World Lacrosse Championships. Below is a recount of his experience.
On Christmas Day of 2009 I woke up, opened my presents, and soon after left for Madrid, Spain for five days to tryout for the Spanish National Team that was to compete in the 2010 World Championships in Manchester, England. On January 22nd, I got an invitation and I was honored to be selected to the 23 man roster as a face-off and defensive midfielder.
Spain is new to the lacrosse world; however it already has 12 teams in Spain and 2 in Portugal. Though it has established lacrosse, Spain relies heavily on US players for their experience. Our roster was made up of myself representing Indianapolis, Thomas Gavin of Manhasset, New York, Timon Lorenzo of Princeton, New Jersey, and Juan Andrews of Wilton, Connecticut. Our other experienced players were Patrick Mercado of Finland, Rob Messenger of Manchester, England, and Dani De La Casa of Toronto, Canada.
I arrived on July 12th in Manchester at the same time as Team USA arrived. Matt Zash and Joe Cinosky recognized me from the clinic that Team USA had held here in Indy in October and we stopped to chat as we worked our way through customs. Tired and hungry, I arrived at the University of Manchester.
We immediately began practicing on the 14th and quickly scrimmaged two teams resulting in two wins. Just before starting division play we found out the Iroquois team was not able to arrive the day of the opening ceremony. This allowed Germany to be promoted to the blue division while the Iroquois Nationals were downgraded to our division. Unfortunately for the tournament but fortunately for Spain, they did not show up. We won by forfeit 1-0. The following day we played Norway and won 12-10. The day after we played Hong Kong and won 16-14. We had won our division thus moving us into the Sweet 16. Unfortunately we lost our next 4 games to Finland, Netherlands, Poland, and New Zealand.
Although the last 4 games were disappointing, the experience of playing at the world level was phenomenal. People often assume that the quality of play in the tournament should be lacking due to lacrosse being mainly played in the US and Canada. I was one of those doubters, and completely underestimated the competition.
There were numerous American and Canadian players on just about every national team that competed with the exception of a few new teams such as Switzerland and Argentina. All of these players were either dual citizens or heritage players. Scotland was loaded with Canadians, Brian Hubschmann (Notre Dame graduate) was playing for the Czech team, Culver Military Academy graduate Greg Micelli was playing for the Italians, Rob Fortunato and Tim Fuchs of UVA were also playing for Team Italy, and Sean McTerman (New England transplant living in Indy and Gettysburg graduate) played for Ireland.
There were enough players on each team to make the tournament very competitive and an incredibly fun experience. Even the festival games, a tournament that is held along with the World Tournament was a success with divisions ranging from high school to super grand masters (50 year old laxers). It was an amazing experience, and would not have traded it for the world.
