The new game gloves have arrived

Sophmore middie Dan Fineman rockin this years game gloves.

OC Lax rockin the new STX Cell elbow pads

Senior captain Alex Chapman sporting some of the Yeomen's new gear for this spring.

Yeomen lax streaming LIVE

The press box at Fred Schultz field is now wired for the information super highway. All home games will be streaming live online. For more info go to www.GOYEO.com

Oberlin All-Americans

A list of Oberlin lacrosse players that made the All-America team:

1954        Goodrich, Howard (Howie)    Attack   
1955        Brainard, William (Bill)    Attack  
1955       Oakes, Robert (Bob)    Defense   
1955        Tyler, Carl    Midfield   
1956        Abeles, Jerome (Jerry)    Midfield   
1956        Brainard, William (Phil)    Attack   
1956        Glasoe, Paul    Attack   
1956        Suhr, Charles (Chuck)    Midfield   
1960        Hobbs, Robert (Bob)    Attack   
1960        Horn, Joseph (Joe)    Midfield   
1960        Vernon, Hugh    Defense   
1961        Babos, Laszlo    Goalie   
1961        Baker, Richard (Dick)    Attack   
1961        Moses, Robert (Bob)    Defense   
1961        Webster, William (Bill)    Midfield   
1963        Witte, John    Midfield   
1965        LaGuardia, Arnold (Arny)    Defense   
1970        Markwood, Robert (Bob)    Defense   
1970        Skinner, Michael (Mike)    Attack  

Long lost brothers?

Sophomore goalie Glen Gerbush has an uncanny resemblance to Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers.

Face-off guru stops by Oberlin

Former captain of the Australian national team and current assistant coach with the Long Island Lizards of the MLL Matt Schomburg visited Oberlin for the second straight year to help coach up Oberlin's face-off personal.

OC Athletics gets even greener

WILLIAMS FIELD HOUSE

LEED Gold Certified
Williams Field House is the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified building on campus. Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, the certification verifies that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. (www.usgbc.org

Lighting
The lighting of the facility is designed to take advantage of the natural light from windows and skylights. The lights are equipped with sensors, which will measure the total light on the playing surface. Once the foot-candles reach 100, the lights will begin to turn off and therefore reduce energy consumption.

SOLAR PANEL
- In July 2009, the Oberlin College Athletic and Physical Education Department will be installing a solar panel on the north end of Savage Stadium. This solar panel will provide enough energy to power the football, baseball and softball scoreboards and still have some surplus to feed back to the electrical grid. Below is a brief Q&A with the installation company, RePower Solutions:

Who is The Manufacturer? - Sharp

What are the dimensions of the panel? - (Attached Spec Sheet)

Have you installed these for sports complexes in the past? - We worked on both the design and installation side of the project at Progressive Field. We generally design and install systems that are substantially larger than this single-panel system. We have installed solar electric systems at industrial, commercial and residential locations.

What is the lifespan of this product? - It is expected to produce electricity for over 25 years.

Any additional information? - The football scoreboard uses about 50-kWh/ year. This 175W module is expected to make at least 175kWh/year. (Therefore this one panel will provide enough power to the grid to power our Football, Baseball and Softball scoreboards, and still have a little excess)

Oberlin athletics goes green

All the scoreboards on the Athletics fields starting this fall will be run on solar power. If your in the neighborhood during home football games in the fall stop by to enjoy 'Solar Powered Saturdays'

Jesse Kane JSR 1st team All American

For the second straight year Jesse Kane has been named to the Jewish Sports review 1st team All America team. You can check out the full press release at http://www.goyeo.com/news/2009/7/8/BB_0708092053.aspx?tab=

Meet your new Yeomen

Oberlin, Ohio – Oberlin College head men’s lacrosse coach Kevin Walz announced his 2010 freshman class on Thursday. The Yeomen added six rookies from six different states, each of whom bring outstanding accolades to Oberlin. OC also welcomes a pair of twin brothers in sophomore transfers Matthew Fineman and Daniel Fineman


Eli Clark-Davis
High School: Regents Senior
Home Town: Madison, Wisc.
Position: Midfielder
Awards: Second-Team All-Madison Area Lacrosse Association

Dan Cook
High School: St. Ignatius
Home Town: Cleveland, Ohio
Position: Defender
Awards: Voted Defensive player of the year by his teammates
First-Team All-Region defender
Third-Team All-Ohio Defender

Thomas Cool
High School: Episcopal School
Home Town: Beaverton, Ore.
Position: Defender
Awards: First-Team All-Conference
First-Team All-State
First-Team All-League (2009)
Team won Oregon State Title

Thomas Hake
High School: Glenbrook North
Home Town: Northbrook Ill.
Position: Midfielder
Awards: Second-Team All-State
First-Team All-Conference

Connor Jackson
High School: St. Mary’s College
Home Town: Berkeley, Calif.
Position: Attack
Awards: Most Valuable Player Bay Shore Athletic League
Saint Mary's College High School-MVP Senior Year
Saint Mary's College High School-Offensive Player of the Year

Nathanial Cobert-Sangree
High School: Park
Home Town: Baltimore, Md.
Position: Defense

Kane Earns All-NCAC Honorable-Mention Honors

Westlake, Ohio – For the second straight season Oberlin College men’s lacrosse player Jesse Kane was named to the All-NCAC Honorable-Mention Team, the league office announced on Tuesday afternoon.




read more at; http://www.goyeo.com/news/2009/5/26/MLAX_0526095634.aspx?tab=

Hugh "Gabby" Robertson inducted into The Heisman Club HOF

On the evening of May 23rd Hugh "Gabby" Robertson the founder of the Oberlin mens lacrosse team and one of the fathers of mid west lacrosse was inducted into the Heisman Club's Athletics Hall of Fame. You can read more about the induction by clicking the link below.
http://www.goyeo.com/news/2009/5/23/GEN_0523091455.aspx?tab=

Oberlin lax geography

13 States will be represented on the 2010 Yeomen roster. NY, MD, VA, NJ, MA, CT, PA, OH, IL, MN, OR, CA, WA.

Coach Walz speaks

Coach Walz's video for the senior luncheon.

Senior Awards

Senior captain Jesse Kane is one of the four recipients of the Andrews award at this years athletic dept. senior luncheon.

Andrews Family Award
This award was established in 2005 in honor of the Andrews family, whose presence at Oberlin traces back six generations to Delia Fenn Andrews, an 1841 graduate of the College. More recently, Chris '90 (soccer, track and field) and George '54 (football) served the College as members of the department of mathematics and the General Faculty Athletics Committee. George also served as acting director of athletics and physical education in 2002-2003. The recipient of this award will be the male athlete who best exemplifies dedication to academic and athletic excellence and has demonstrated leadership skills, strength of character, and loyalty to Oberlin College.
Recipients – Greg Mangan (Football) Conor Doss (Track/Cross Country) Jesse Kane (Lacrosse) Ryan King (Track/Cross Country)

Matt & Jesse enjoying Savannah, GA

While in Savannah with the team on spring break Matt and Jesse decided to take a few photos for use in the senior day program.

Matt donates hair to locks of love

15

I've been slacking, I told many people that I was going to continue blogging here for the team and I haven't written anything new for a couple of weeks now. Coach Cohen has badgered me everyday for the last week or so about writing a new post, so here I am in the library about to start doing some work, and lo and behold I find the time to write a blog post instead.

From the moment fall ball began last semester our team took pride in and drew strength from our small numbers, but tight knit group mentality. During our last few games our team has had a new cheer, "15!". I love the mentality and the spirit behind it, but personally it's been tough to yell, seeing as I haven't even been able to practice since the Medaille game. I've been on the sidelined for the first time in my Oberlin career, during a stretch of conference games, no less. We've got Wooster at home on Wednesday, I'm hoping to get in that one (I had hoped to be in the last two as well). It starts a string of three home games before we end the season with two on the road, I'm going to be keep being real unhappy if I spend much more time just contributing to the the 15 by fetching balls so they don't have to ball hunt at the end of practice.

It's an odd parallel to high school, have a good junior year, be a captain senior year, get injured in a bizarre way, and miss time for the first time for that team. Despite going to through a similar situation four years ago I'm having the same problems I did with it then. I've never been a vocal, speech-giving leader (Jesse's the man for that and many other things), I've always tried to lead through my play, simply be a consistent, reliable, stabilizing force on D. How do I lead without being able to play? I struggled with that in high school and I have been since I've been sat. I wish I had the answers, but I can't be someone I'm not, so I've just been doing everything I've been told to do for my rehab. That way I can get back to helping this team in the best way I know how.

-Matt Hollenbeck '09

Alums in the Ohio lacrosse Hall of Fame

1994 inductee
Joe Horn
1995 inductee
Cornelius "Mickey" Cochrane
You can learn more about the Ohio lacrosse Hall of Fame at www.ohlax.com

NCAC player of the week

Westlake, Ohio – Oberlin College senior men’s lacrosse player Jesse Kane was named as the North Coast Athletic Conference Player of the Week, the league office announced on Monday evening.
*Check out the full press release on the Oberlin college athletics website www.GOYEO.com.

The Beginning (3/28/09)

At this point, what beginning do we have? This beginning is the beginning of lasts. It's our last night in Hilton Head, it has been amazing, but bittersweet like I couldn't even imagine. Every year spring break is a chance to better get to know the guys that maybe you didn't know all that well, or to grow closer with those you did. This year was no different, I got to hangout with some great guys for a week in an awesome spot. How could that be bittersweet? Well, that would be because my time with them is limited (it's always been limited, but the limit is oh so close this time). Tonight Jesse and I took a nice long walk around Palmetto Dunes talking about senior year: life (the rest of this year, the summer, next year, real life), the universe (creationism, Palmetto Dunes, the mountains), and everything (girls, my deeply disturbed psyche, burning man). While we were talking I was thinking about how you only get the full four years with the other guys (or guy in our case) in your class and it occurred to me that the quality of the guys on this team and the friendships is why our alumni game is so well attended. We just don't have enough time with each other, even though there are moments when it seems like we spend too much time together.

As we are getting ready to leave I come to the realization that I didn't hangout enough with each of the guys, but looking back I can't think of time that I want to trade to hangout with someone else, simply because the time I'd be trading in was spent hanging out with another one of the guys and is equally as valuable.

I had to get that out of the way before I was going to be able to sleep (I'm writing this somewhere in the range of 3 am the same morning the bus leaves Hilton Head) and/or write about the annual team dinner at Steamers (a seafood place here on the island) paid for the legend himself, Don Jacobs(lacrosse alumni & father of current player Alex Jacobs). As always it was amazing and an absolute glutton fest of seafood. There is one legendary item on the menu, the shellfish platter, that everyone talks about and a much smaller percentage actually eat. It is really more shellfish than anyone human should attempt to eat, I got it freshmen year and thought that ordering it again would provide a nice symmetry. Besides that, one of the two veggies on the team decided he was coming back, so hopefully we'll have video up soon of his first bite of meat in a very long time (it was steak). We have a tradition of it being one of the freshmen's birthday at Steamer's, mainly so we can all cause a ruckus by singing and laughing at the confused look he gets. This year instead of the wait staff bringing a desert with a candle in it, our waiter thought what he really should do was take a fat handful of whipped cream and put it in his face. We're thinking this guy eats too many doritos and drinks too much mountain dew (get it? he's too extreme).

For those of you reading this (and I know there are some, I've heard of you through the grapevine), please let me know who you are and how I'm doing. You can go ahead and comment away, or send me an email ( matthew.hollenbeck@oberlin.edu ). I'm thinking about keeping my regular blog appearances going once my spring break tenure is up and I'd like some input.
- Matt Hollenbeck '09

The Third Plague (3/26/09)

I have to put in some corrections (because my mom emailed and heckled me), it was 900 miles, and I also got both aloe (which has come in real handy if you get the title of this post) and a bunch of goodies in addition to the spf 15 sunscreen.

So we won, despite what amounted to a plague of biting sand flies of biblical proportions. We beat SCAD in triple overtime, with some strong goaltending, timely goal scoring, and some real strong late defensive stands. It was awesome to get that weight of our shoulders, I think this will help us move forward, knowing that we can win even in the face of adversity. The win really lifted the guys' spirits, which were already pretty high after having spent the day hanging out in Savannah.

Savannah is an amazing city, beautiful, tree canopied streets of the old south, but with a very alternative, liberal vibe. We had a great time walking the city, wandering into cool little shops (including an amazing candy shop), and having two awesome meals, Vic's on the River for lunch and the Distillery post game. Jesse and I had Joey take what will most likely be the senior day program cover, a nice romantic picture of us staring deep into each others eyes standing on a bridge in a Savannah.

- Matt Hollenbeck '09

P.S. Coach Walz was the first player out in our final game of Risk, I went out last.

Beach Bums (3/24/09)

Ok, ok, I've been slacking in this whole blogging thing. Hopefully I'll be better now that I've finally pulled my computer out of my bag.

I'm not going to say much about last Saturday's game, but we came out flat and lackadaisical, hopefully we can get our heads on straight and play to our potential during spring break.

Over the past few days, we've had a couple of good hard practices, plenty of beach time (including a beach football game that featured "accidental" full contact and me picking off a pass and running it in for a touchdown and the win), and the annual trip to the Piggly Wiggly. Today we had an early practice so we could have all afternoon out on the beach, and by we I mean the rest of the guys, because I'm sitting back in my condo taking care of an "undisclosed lower body injury". On the plus side that means I get to get caught up on the blog (yay!), I can make sure the jerseys get taken out of the laundry machine, and stay out of the sun (because all I have is spf 15, really mom? spf 15? if you're going to bring sunscreen 500 miles why spf 15?).

Tonight is the final showdown between myself and Coach Walz on the Risk board, I'll let you know who wins the game of Global Domination.

Tomorrow we have our scrimmage against SCAD, we'll also be spending the day in Savannah, so hopefully we'll have some good stories for our next blog entry.

Longest Bus Ride Ever (3/20/09)

For Jesse and myself this is our fourth and final spring break. It's amazing how quickly my college career has gone, it seems like just yesterday we were on our way to spring break with Andrew Crosby playing the guitar, singing about Palmetto Dunes. Everyday, and especially on this trip, I hope that we can be as good to this team as the seniors before us have been. Between that desire and the rapidly approaching end of my career make each game and every moment with this team extra important and memorable.

Like this one, when we're stuck in traffic somewhere north of Nashville at some ungodly hour of the night. We decided not to put on another movie (after finishing our fourth of the ride), and the bus has been stationary for about a half hour (people around us have gotten out of their cars and are milling around), so as you can imagine the boys are going a little stir crazy. Even at times like these, when I have to put on headphones so I don't have to listen to them anymore, I can't imagine being a part of another team.
- Matt Hollenbeck '09

Here we go again - 3/20/09

Today we left for spring break in Hilton Head, SC. During our 11 day trip we'll have games against Sewanee and Guilford, plus a scrimmage against SCAD. I'll be blogging during the trip (through Coach Cohen, so we'll blame delayed and poor quality posts on him, even though it's probably my fault).
- Matt Hollenbeck '09

St. Patricks day @ The lacrosse office

Joey Pope's video diary

Yeomen @ Shenandoah U.

Greetings Obie Lax Blog visitors!

So unfortunately our second match didn’t go as smoothly as we all had hoped. It looks like Oberlin Lacrosse ’09 will have to wait another week until we get another crack at our first W. Even though losing to Shenandoah University 8-9 in overtime is less than ideal, I think we all walked away with a tiny presence of gratification. We were facing a team that not only had beaten us the last time we met two years prior but also had a sideline roughly three times as large as ours. We dominated in nearly every aspect of the game right from the start but somehow still managed to lose. Though disheartening, for us it will hopefully be the motivating factor going into Sewanee this Saturday to perfect our game.

Having such a small squad really has created an interesting dynamic to the sport and it pushes us to work twice as hard in nearly every facet. One of the Shenandoah attackmen commented to me during the game that he was impressed with the amount of talent our team had despite our low numbers. Coach Walz also mentioned that he talked with a few Oberlin Lax Alums that were there and they said that it was the best Oberlin lacrosse they had ever seen. Of course this is in no way a consolation to losing a game we absolutely should have won, but it at least says to me were making progress. After last year’s season, progress is the only thing this team should be exhibiting.

Any who, I could go on but perhaps I should let the rest of the season speak for itself. Junior defenseman Joey Pope signing out.

Fast break defense

• The first thing all team defenses must do in a fast break defense is simply making the call “fast break”. This allows everyone to know we are in an unsettled defense and to react accordingly.
• The defense must then get in their “fast break triangle”. Its important to remember that once a fast break is called, the defense is no longer man-to-man, it’s in a zone.
• To effectively execute your fast break defense, proper communication is imperative. The top of the triangle should identify himself as the point man; he will make the call as to whether the defense needs to rotate or if they can hold. The two remaining close defenders drop to the right & left pipes of the goal calling back right & back left
• It’s important to remember that once one player rotates in the triangle, all must rotate as one. You must trust your teammates in this situation and not hesitate. Once the point man slides to stop ball, he must make the wheel or rotate call. (Terminology will vary from program to program.)
• The following will be described in steps, but it’s EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that it’s executed in unison. Once the wheel call is made, the following occurs:
o The point man slides to pick up ball once he has made the offensive player move the ball on. He drop steps down to the goal to get to the back left pipe as soon as possible.
o The player on the back left pipe slides cross crease ending up on the back right pipe.
o The player on the back right pipe slides upfield to pick up the point attackman. If the point attackman receives the ball it’s especially important to slide on an angle similar to a C or a banana, forcing the shooter to either hit him or the goalie near pipe.
*NOTE: Whenever sliding or breaking down on ball, never take a flat angle to the offensive player. Be sure to take an angle that will force the ball carrier down the alley or the shooter to shoot near pipe.

Hugh Robertson

Above is a photo of Hugh Robertson coaching lacrosse on the Oberlin campus in the late 40's. While a student at Oberlin Hugh was instrumental in organizing the first game west of the Alleghenies in 1941. It took place on the Oberlin campus featuring The Oberlin Yeomen vs. The Kenyon Lords. The 2009 season is dedicated in his memory.