With one game remaining, Malden’s boys lacrosse nears the end of their season. With 16 games played and seven won, the team was unable to qualify for states, but Coach Johnathan Copithorne is still happy with the outcome of the season.
Going into the year the team was hopeful about the season, even battling through injuries to practice and prepare. Unfortunately, due to injuries, the team has not had a chance to perform to their highest potential. However, especially towards the end of May, the team has made great strides.
Copithorne acknowledged that their new player numbers were down but Copithorne believes this was not the only issue. He wishes that the team had done more during the off-season.
Coach Copithorne’s favorite game of the season so far was their game against Cambridge on Friday, May 20th where the team lost 10-3. “It’s the best game that I’ve seen us play all year,” remarked Copithorne. Coach’s least favorite game was against Revere towards the beginning of the season. Copithorne didn’t see much competition from the game and even quipped: “I think we got a little worse after [the game against Revere]. If you look at our next three games after, it showed.”
Continuing on about the game on Friday night against Cambridge, which was also the team’s senior night, Copithorne was excited to go up against the team that had already beaten them that season. “It just was a full effort from everyone, Aiden had one of the best games you’ll see a goalie play, playing through some sort of injury and trying to make sure that they can help the team. Everyone on the sidelines was cheering, and encouraging the team and there was tons of energy. It was everything I liked about the sport.”
With the team losing a major portion of their athletes due to graduation, Copithorne elaborated that “there’s going to be a lot of gaps in leadership that we’re going to have to address. We have a lot of hopeful returners that we can rely on,” adding that “they’re going to be tough to replace, but our returners are going to have to do a good job of recruiting, trying to get some more folks. Certainly, make sure that we’re doing some off-season work and I think we’ll have a chance to even improve on some of the good things we’ve done this year.”
