The resurgence finally includes a surge.
Four-win seasons are part of the past for the St. Michael’s College men’s lacrosse team. The Purple Knights go for their first 10-win spring in over a decade this weekend, and five MetroWest players are along for the ride.
But success didn’t happen overnight.
The 2017 team won just two games and just a combined eight in the two following seasons. The ‘21 team lost eight in a row to end the season, then started 1-10 in ‘22.
“When I committed to SMC I knew that I was going to a program that was in a re-building stage,” said Dylan Morgan, a senior from Ashland.
The midfielder has 10 goals and 10 assists as the Knights (9-4) open Northeast-10 Conference Tournament play on Saturday night at Bentley University. St. Mike’s has not won 10 matches in a season since 2013, when D.J. Dauria (Dover-Sherborn) and Evan White (Lincoln-Sudbury) helped the Knights to an 11-5 season.
Sean Murphy, a sophomore midfielder from Medway, played a key role in SMC’s signature win this year, scoring four goals and adding an assist in a 15-13 victory at No. 7 St. Anselm on April 17. The Knights hadn’t won at St. A’s since 1997.
Murphy is fourth on the team with 15 goals.
Leading the turnaround
For Morgan, the former Clocker captain whose freshman season at the Colchester, Vermont, school ended with just three wins, envisioned the program’s turnaround when he first joined the team.
“I saw the opportunity to make an impact early on the field and be part of the revitalization,” he said in an email. “My class all entered into the same mindset and have been committed to being the change that we wanted SMC Lax to be.”
Teddy Rice, a four-year player at Wayland High, is also on the team. He played in the same club lacrosse program as Murphy – Top Gun Fighting Clams – but they were not on the same team because of their age differences.
A pair of local freshmen midfielders – Liam Weagle (Hudson/Assabet) and Billy Neiberger (Framingham) - have both come off the bench, but are intent on making sure SMC’s recent run isn’t fleeting.
“Coming in, it was hard to tell how the season would go without knowing what the competition was going to be like,” said Neiberger, a former Framingham captain and 100-point scorer for the Flyers, “but after we had a few games under our belt it was clear that we have something special here.”
Neiberger was hosted by Morgan during his initial visit to St. Mike’s in high school and said “meeting Dylan (Morgan) and Ted (Rice) when I came in immediately led to a connection knowing that both were just a town over from me.”
Finishing school
SMC closed the regular season Tuesday with a 15-6 win at American International College behind two goals from Morgan and another from Murphy. Saturday’s game at Bentley to begin NE-10 Tournament play represents SMC’s first time earning a spot in the post-season since ‘13. (All teams automatically made it in ‘21 during COVID).
“No one on this team has been here before,” said Weagle, a lacrosse captain and three-sport standout at Assabet. “It is a new opportunity for all of us. The key factor to our team and our biggest advantage over every team is that we play for each other. Right before we loaded the bus to head down to play AIC (Tuesday) coach (Alex) Smith said, ‘Don’t look at other game scores, just focus on us.’ That's where we found our success.”
Saturday’s game at Bentley is a rematch from an April 9 match in Colchester, won by the Falcons, 16-15, in overtime. Bentley, ranked No. 13 in Division 2, has won five consecutive games and includes six locals: Charlie David and Jaiden Wilde (Algonquin); Jake Tyska (Natick); Thomas Hirsch (AMSA); Tim Connors (Ashland); and Henry Murphy (Dover-Sherborn).
The SMC/Bentley winner will move on to the NE-10 semifinals at top-seeded Adelphi on Wednesday, May 1. Morgan hopes to continue his season – and career – into the new month. Either way, his St. Mike's experience is irreplaceable.
“There is nothing that can substitute for the feeling of walking onto a college campus as an incoming freshman, and instantly having 50 people you can turn to for anything,” he said. “We spend more time together outside of lacrosse than we do in lacrosse. It’s truly an experience that you can’t explain. You develop memories together both on and off the field that build a level of bond that you cannot understand unless you have done it.”
Tim Dumas is a multimedia journalist for the Daily News. He can be reached attdumas@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @TimDumas.
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