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Introduction to Box Lacrosse: My WILC Experience, Pt. 2

By Bryan Hopper, 10/22/15, 1:45PM EDT

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Athletes Dinner, Opening Ceremonies, and First Day of Games!

About the Onondaga Nation

For those who are unfamiliar, the Onondaga Nation is located just next to Syracuse and is home to several different tribes. Perhaps the most famous players to come out of there are the Thompson's (Lyle, Miles, Ty, Jerome, Haina), but other notables include Oren Lyons and Randy Staats and Jeff Shattler. To them, lacrosse is religion, it is the "creators" game. Very cool.

Blue Star Lacrosse Box Lacrosse WILC

The Onondaga Nation Arena!

Thursday Night Athletes Dinner

The WILC is a unique challenge for players and especially coaches because most teams only have one or two practices before they start the tournament. Think about that - each team has barely played together and yet has to compete in the World Championships after a few days. The exceptions are the USA, Canada and the Iroquois. But for example on USA, Marcus Holman had never played a game of box before he came to the tournament. The learning curve is steep for everyone!

Thursday night after our practice there was a dinner for all the teams and tournament personnel in the Pavilion Tent on the Onondaga Reservation.

This was the first time an international competition had ever been held on Native American soil and they spared nothing for the tournament - it was an amazing set up. The arena, the locker rooms, and the food and services were second to none. At the dinner Thursday night the teams gathered to hear the tournament directors, Haudenosaunee spokespeople and Spiritual Leaders talk. (The spiritual leader of the people is a man by the name of Oren Lyons who was also an all-american goalie at Syracuse.)


Thursday night featured an Athletes dinner and guest speakers from the Onondaga Nation to Kick things off!

Blue Star Lacrosse Box Lacrosse WILC

Tent in the Athletes Dinner Had all the Bells and Whistles


First Game - Serbia

After the dinner, we went back home to prepare for our first game against Serbia the following morning at 9:30AM. We were actually the first game of the tournament. There was not a whole lot of respect for us as they played the wrong national anthem at the beginning of the first game...

Serbia had three Canadians we needed to worry about who were NLL all-stars, the Gajic Brothers and Nik Bilik. It was the first game of the tournament and we had no idea what to expect. The warmups for box lacrosse are long - 60 Minutes! I liked it better though because you go out, you shoot around, you warmup, do some more shooting, come back inside get suited up, go back out and get more intense warm ups and finally back into the locker room for the pregame speech. We were lucky enough to have two amazing Coaches in Brad Macarthur (NLL veteran) and Jason Crosbie (NLL veteran) or "Croz" as we call him. The game went great for our first team outing - we prevailed 15-8. The highlight of my lacrosse career is probably Chad Culp feeding me a super slick behind the back pass on a man up for a goal - maybe the best pass I've ever gotten and it was from a NLL vet! After the handshake each team exchanges gifts; we had jewish star key chains and they gave us beer bottle openers :).

Israel 15 - Serbia 8


Opening Ceremonies

The opening ceremonies took place at the Onondaga War Memorial Arena in downtown Syracuse that night. It was a SERIOUS production! The arena was sold out (7k people) for the ceremony and the USA vs. Iroquiois game after. I wont waste your time with too many words here because the pictures say it all. There was an hour long presentation with the Haudenosaunee People on the history of their people followed by a parade onto the floor by all the athletes. Jim Brown spoke for a few minutes towards the end of the ceremony. They had to change the rules because he was so good (he cut the stick super short and chested the ball so they have to regulate stick length after him). He played at Syracuse way back when before playing in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns. Anyways, Check the pics!

Stay tuned for part 3 - if you thought summer tournaments are bad just wait until you play three box games in a row! 


The crowd was packed to watch Team Iroquois take on Team USA!