On Thursday the 3rd of June, Greece Thunder LAX purpled the party room at Ridgemont Country Club for the annual awards banquet. Dinner was eaten while prizes were raffled and Chris "Beads" Caracci proceeded to thank her army of volunteers for all of their hard work and efforts on behalf of the Thunder Lacrosse program this past year, with a box of tissues nearby. She then begrudgingly handed the mic over to yours truly to do the honors introducing a most distinguished guest speaker, Rob Weilert, who was skyped in from FLA by Kim Cheese over webex. Can I get a round of applause for Chris for her tremendous leadership and drive to put Thunder Lacrosse on the map? Those beads are pretty powerful !!!
Rob is a Thunder LAX alum and former Modified coach who followed the gravy train south to Florida a year ago to teach the next generation of hanging chads. A consummate speaker and legend in his own mind, Rob is a pretty tough act to follow, and this year's opus was no exception. He addressed the masses on hand in the ballroom thanking everyone for keeping him in the loop and congratulating the coaches and players on a rather successful season across the board. Troubled by the news of yet another failed budget in Greece, Rob knew their was little hope of seeing thunder playing on their own turf field anytime soon. And so, he offered his vision of how we could one-up all the other area programs with their fancy turf fields and brand new stadiums, by employing state of the art remote coaching technology. "You think you are all that with your new stadium and turf field, well check this out - as a big flat screen is wheeled out onto the field with Weilert appearing larger than life - we have a coach who doesn't even live here, so top that." Then Weilert would start coaching the boys remotely as the opponent hung their heads knowing they were beaten.
Mod captains thanked their coaches and then turned the floor over to Coach Bringley who in turn thanked his assistants, announced his players, and handed out the team awards. MVP went to Rick Lipani, MIP went to Tim Vera, and Coaches Award went to Ethan Morangon. Bringley also commented on how he found a Syracuse LAX sticker on Mr Testa's classroom door at school and figured that was a good place to start looking for help!
JV captains Jake/Joe/Keenan/Kenny recognized Tom Heaton with a scrabook of thank yous from the players, thanked their coaches and then turned things over to Coach Gangarosa who went on to thank his legions of JV supporters from Dave Allen who was his assistant coach to Al Testa who also helped out from time to time, to team moms Carm Crowe and Renee "Crocker" Mahoney who were directly responsible for the team gaining weight during the season, to Tom heaton for taking pictures and maintaining the website all season. Javier Jones was the MIP, Anthony "AC" Crawford was the MVP, and Keenan Mahoney received the Coaches Award.
Varsity captains Brandon Cheeseman, Dan Conway, and Dan Vyverberg thanked their coaches and commented how much they had learned on a position specific basis from having dedicated offensive, defensive, and goaltending coaches who were alumni of the program that had come back to work with the players on a daily basis. Coach Perry came up and thanked Kim Heaton for the wonderful program book and Lisa Bucklin for coordinating the JMJ tournament participation, and Wendy Bonis for coordinating the anthem singers, and yours truly for color commentary at the Varsity games and in the Wes Report.
Perry went on to play a little numbers game.
30 - the collective number of wins for mod, JV, and Varsity as they each hit double digits with 10 wins apiece. it was also worth noting that only 13 out of 35 varsity teams in Section V had 10 or more wins.
6.3/8.1/8.9/11.8 - average goals per game 2007-2010. showing steady improvement in offense. also noteworthy is that we gave up only 9 goals a game on average this year so we outscored our opponents.
52 - number of goals scored this season by Dan "Vyper" Vyverberg, surpassing previous record set by Nate Wallenhorst back in 2008
440 - number of ground balls Brandon "Cheese" Cheeseman picked up in his Thunder LAX career. The cheese stands alone in this category having scooped 170 in 2008 alone.
Varsity Team Awards
Tough to pick an MVP given the numerous outstanding performances in net, on D, and on offense this year. So, coaches went with a best hustle award instead
- Best Hustle went to Jared Sangiorgi
- MIP was cosidered over a 2-year span and went to Zach Rudgers
- Coaches Award went to Nick Materise.
Scholar Athlete awards
- Vyper, Cheese, Materise, Caracci, Hostetter, Wyzykowski, and Sangiorgi.
Special recognition of tireless dedication
- Team manager Dwayne Austin.
Thunder garnered 3 of 16 possible 1st team all county awards, 3 of 16 possible 2nd team awards and 1 honorable mention out of a pool of 160 players in the MC3 division.
- First team offense went to Vyper
- First team midi went to Tyler Giorgione
- First team defense went to Cheese (first 3-peat in pgm history)
- Second team offense went to Matt Keough
- Second team defense went to Tyler Lepore
- Second team faceoff midi went to Gino Prestigiacomo
- Honorable Mention went to Zach Rudgers
GO THUNDER LACROSSE
ONE TEAM ~~ONE FIGHT~~ONE FAMILY
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