By Southwestern Coach Bill Bowman

Southwestern Lacrosse as it has been known for the past 25 years has 4 games left in the regular season.

Anything after that will, of course, have to be earned.  For 12 years I have been walking on the sidelines in games, running around (jogging or walking if you ask the guys on the team) in practice, and have loved every minute of it.

However, the finality of this season and program is starting to creep to the forefront of my mind as well as that of the members of this team.

As the “buslag” (riding on a bus for 20+ hours is an experience and the stories are priceless) is beginning to wear off from our trip to the SELC to play SCAD, TWC, and Elon, I have to keep reminding myself to always look forward, when everything tells me to take a step back at Southwestern Lacrosse this one final season.

We, for various reasons, made the trip with 19 guys, 18 who would suit up each game.  We knew it was a tall order, but had never played an SELC team before and were very thankful Coach Cummings and the members of the SCAD squad were willing to host us for the weekend.  They were great hosts, and the trip was yet another opportunity for us to find out about ourselves, as we are ever evolving at best.

To be clear, I must take a step back to two weekends ago.  At 7:30 in the morning I received a phone call from one of my players on game day.  This is never a good thing, and unfortunately, on this day it was a very bad thing.

Our Senior attackman, Martin Irish, was in the hospital with a possible broken leg.  That is all I was told.  As the information started to come out, it became apparent that Irish was lucky to be alive.

At a little after 6, he was awoken by sirens outside the 2nd story window of a historic house a few blocks from campus.  As he made it to the window, he saw cops all over the place and firetrucks could be heard in the distance.  Immediately Martin was told by the police that he had to jump and do so now.  The house was completely engulfed in flames and there was no other exit.

Martin went and opened the bedroom door only to be bombarded by smoke and flames so intense, he ended up with smoke inhalation.  Without thinking, he made it to the window and plummeted two stories to the ground, and ultimately safety.  If the fire were to have started anywhere else in the house…who knows.

At 8:30, I received a call from Martin himself, completely distraught, but alive.  His first thought was about the game that day against conference opponent Centenary.  I assured him there were more important things in life than lacrosse, like being alive and ok, and he calmed down.

He was at the game, on crutches yelling louder than me (and that is very hard to do).  We found out a few days later that we are not sure if his career is over at Southwestern, or if he will be able to make it back in time for games at the end of the season.  While the prognosis looks good that he will be able to return, we will not know until after Spring Break.

Martin, like so many other guys who have worn a lacrosse jersey at Southwestern, never played before arriving on campus.  In fact, he was a Varsity Golf recruit who picked up a stick for the heck of it.  What made him choose to stick with lacrosse to this day and forego all that goes along with a Varsity sport, I still do not know.

But along the way Martin turned into a very good lacrosse player, garnering Honorable Mention honors as an All American last year.  With such an interesting beginning, it is what he was set to accomplish this year that is so amazing.  Martin only need(s)(ed) 44 assists to be the all time assist leader in Southwestern Lacrosse history.

His pace before his injury would have easily broken the record.  So often players new to the game have the field vision come as one of the last parts of their game.  For Martin and his athletic ability and multi sport background, it was what set him apart and allowed him to blossom.

There are a lot of things I want to accomplish this last year.  One of the biggest now is to have Irish rejoin his teammates on the field in uniform and in the scorebook for the last games to ever be played by this program.  Records, after all are made to be broken.

So are bones and hearts.  However, while the road trip to the SELC  was tough, Martin cheering his team on, giving speeches that would fire up anyone, and the way the team responded to three very good teams is a testament that we indeed have been able to define ourselves as the season has continued no matter what has come our way.

Who knows,  we may still have a little luck of the Irish yet.

Southwestern Head Coach Bill Bowman graduated from SU in 1992 and has coached the lacrosse team for 12 straight seasons.  2009 will be his last year at the helm of the Pirates as the school has hired a new varsity head coach that will begin his duties in the Fall.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Bill Bowman, Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.