Big roster, but minimal experience; experienced coach, but not with Red Raiders
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – The Ocean City High School girls lacrosse team has long been a power in the Cape-Atlantic League. This season, everything is up in the air.
The good news for the Red Raiders is that all of the New Jersey teams are in a similar boat and the NJSIAA is giving all spring sports as close to a full season as it can, compared to the delayed and limited fall and winter seasons.
After missing the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Red Raider girls are bringing back a grand total of two – that’s two – returning varsity player.
The girls have an experienced coach in Lesley Graham, but she is new to the program. She’s not exactly new; she was named head coach more than a year ago … and then the team didn’t play or practice until this month.
The last time the girls team played a game, according to Graham, was May of 2019.
The seniors in the class of 2020 didn’t play last year. Neither did the juniors or anyone else, the cause for the lack of returning experience.
“We have a varsity roster of 24 this year which is a pretty large number,” Graham said before a scrimmage with Shawnee last week. “My coaching philosophy is developing players. If you have varsity potential, I want you to come up and play with the strong players so you can get better.
“Out of those 24, I have two returning varsity players. Everyone else was new, whether they were freshman players, JV, so we are very young in that regard. But, luckily, everyone in the state of New Jersey is in the same place. Everyone lost a year last year,” she added.
Graham wants to make sure her players value what they do have.
“We’re really trying to focus on shifting the conversation from all that we lost to all that we have the opportunity to do,” she said. “That’s kind of like our focus going forward, but it’s definitely strange. We also throw in the fact that I’m a new coach, we don’t have many returning varsity players, so we’re kind of starting from scratch.”
The team’s motto this year is “Zoom out,” which has a double meaning.
One meaning, she said, is that “we hope to never have to do another Zoom because everyone is over the Zoom meetings, Zoom calls, Zoom workouts.” The other meaning is “the bigger picture, zooming out and trying not to get bogged down in the minute details of things. Instead, seeing the bigger picture and recognizing just how grateful we need to be for this opportunity and how if we come together, even though we’re young, that we can make a big impact.”
There have been other adjustments as well.
Graham, who played lacrosse for Division I Ithaca College, didn’t have the opportunity to assess her players as she normally would.
Because of fears of COVID-19 and to keep her players healthy, the girls practiced in pods instead of the entire team, and based on that Graham and assistant coach Mikenzie Helphenstine split them into varsity and JV.
Graham said that was a big adjustment because normally all the players are together practicing and she can mix them up to see who plays well together and in different positions. “It’s like fitting puzzle pieces together,” she explains. “That didn’t really happen. We had five days of varsity practice before we had our first scrimmage, but it was so great to get to play another team.”
Because of the lack of experience all around, except for seniors Alexis Smallwood and Tess Grimley, Graham has six freshmen on the varsity squad. “The previous me never did,” she said.
As background, Graham started her coaching career in Scotland after graduating from Ithaca. Her first coaching job in the states was as an assistant at Division I Canisius College in Buffalo. She also was head coach at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia before she moved to Florida to start a Division II women’s lacrosse program at Saint Leo University outside of Tampa.
Due to family circumstances, she moved back to Ocean City and spent two years as an assistant coach at Stockton University before being named Ocean City head coach. She is familiar with Ocean City, having vacationed in the resort since she was 4 years old. She also spent 14 years on the Ocean City Beach Patrol and competed in lifeguard competitions for the OCBP.
The team
The varsity returning players are Smallwood, a senior captain, and fellow senior Grimley.
On attack is senior captain Chelsea Stack, junior soccer and lacrosse standout Summer Reimet (“It’s nice to have her strength and size”), and a few younger players she hopes will make an impact including Delaniey Sutley, sophomore Grace McAfee, and two juniors, Allie Leeds and Olivia Vanesco (a captain). Another junior captain is Racheli Levy-Smith and senior Emily Tumelty.
Graham said most of her athletes play other sports, “which shows how well rounded they can be. There is a big push now to have kids specialize in one sport, which I think is counterproductive towards their development as an athlete.”
Smallwood anchors the midfield for the Red Raiders. She also said the team is “lucky enough to have kind of specialized midfield positions. We have defensive middies and attacking middies so you take one midfield position and split it into two – one plays the defensive side and transitions out and the attacking middle goes in.”
The rest of the middies are all freshmen: Kelsey Cooke, Gracie Pierce and Breanna Fabi. “They’re all three-sport athletes who play field hockey and swim in the winter. We’re a little young there but we’re going to work through it. Defensive middies are Madison Wenner and Maddy Monteleone.
The coach isn’t sure who will get the starting nod in goal. It’s between junior Reagan Liepe and freshman Presley Green. Both will see varsity playing time.
The spring season was pushed back a month, but also will go longer. There won’t be a Cape-Atlantic League Championship this season, but there will be state playoffs, which begin June 1.
Graham said last year’s team motto was “One more”: “let’s get one more practice, one more game, one more pass before you take the shot, one more rep of the drill, which is ironic because we all would have loved one more opportunity.”
Graham is a competitor and expects her team to work hard and, as she said, try to make a “big impact.”
But there is a bigger goal.
“I want us to be grateful for the opportunity to play and not take it for granted because a year-plus into this pandemic that has cost so many people so much I want people to realize it is bigger than just lacrosse,” she said. “Every chance we get to take that field together as a team is such an opportunity to be grateful for.”
Most of the team’s games this season will be played at the Tennessee Avenue field.
