Christian O’Connor

Fino-Murtaugh

ENG170

4-18-24

Lacrosse is More Than a Game

It is a common occurrence for someone to have a better reason than, I think the sport is fun, when you ask them why they play a sport. In fact, any person who is playing a sport at a college level has another reason. To commit so much of your time in college to something that is not helping you get good grades, it must have more meaning. For some people it is about being a part of something bigger than themselves. For others, it helps them take their mind off the intensity of life. I chose to interview my teammate, Owen Craker, because he was willing to sit down with me and answer questions for this assignment. Also, Owen is one of the guys that I have become closest to on our team, so we were both comfortable talking to each other. Lastly, he is one of the older players on the team, which means he will have more experience and knowledge than one of the other freshman players on my team. Owen Craker, a sophomore on the New Paltz men’s lacrosse team, had a very inspiring and interesting story on why he commits his time, mind, and body to such a physically and mentally demanding sport on top of dealing with classes in college. Before deciding where to go, Owen played lacrosse and football all throughout high school. Going into his Senior year of high school, he was getting ready to decide which sport he was going to choose to continue to participate in at the college level. I sat down with Owen in the library on the downstairs level, during one of our weekly study hall sessions that our team has. He was kind enough to take time that he would have used to get his work done and let me ask him a few questions in order to get this assignment done. This is what I found out about him. Owen got into lacrosse at a young age. He started playing for multiple reasons. The first one was his football coach told him to start playing lacrosse. “It is a physical, fast-paced sport, just like football.” This is why his football coach wanted him to start playing. The other reason he started playing was because all of his friends played lacrosse. When you are at a young age, sports are a great way to make friends. You will spend time with kids who have the same interests as you so friendships will come naturally. After talking to coaches for both lacrosse and football something no one could have predicted happened. Owen completely tore his shoulder and needed surgery for it. In the surgery, a metal rod was inserted in his shoulder and collar bone. This took football completely off the table for him and some lacrosse coaches even stopped talking to him Even though Owen never got to decide if he would have played football, I asked him if he would have chosen to without his injury interfering. “I didn’t have the choice to choose, so I honestly do not know.” Owen doesn’t really think about what he would have done because it does not matter. Owen found himself at New Paltz for one main reason, the coach. When he was a freshman, low on options due to his injury, the head coach at the time, coach Stewart, invited him to play here with open arms. Owen said that his recruitment style was like nothing he has ever seen before. “He really just had conversations with you, mainly not even about lacrosse.” The kindness and hospitality he felt from the coach made New Paltz an easy choice. One thing he, as well as I have learned being a part of our team is to control the controllables. Even though this is just what our coach yells at us when we are screaming at the referee’s, this message goes much further than that. “Do not let things out of your control affect you, just move on from it and make the best out of it.” Owen emphasizes the importance of the lessons you learn on the field are important to remember off the field. The main thing Owen has taken away from being on the team is the responsibilities that come with being a college athlete. You must learn discipline and balance when being on a sports team in college. The film, games during classes, team lifts, and practice every day takes up a lot of your time and energy. Even when you have free time, you are physically and mentally exhausted. Having the discipline to still get your work done is extremely challenging. After talking to Owen, he is getting the hang of it. I am still struggling with it, but he has given me some pointers like, “do your work before you start to relax otherwise you won’t end up doing it.” This is very true and has happened to me multiple times this year. After lifting, classes, and then practice, it is really easy to just chill out for the rest of the day, but you can’t. Owen has learned many important lessons from the team. As he gets older, he understands that his responsibilities will grow. The biggest thing Owen aims to accomplish as one of the new role models of the team is to keep the culture that the guys before him have integrated into our team. As someone who is on this team, I understand why. “The team is a family.” A lot of people say that about their teams but he as well as I have been on many teams and we both agreed this one is like no other. There are no separate clicks, or outliers on the team. When the team hangs out, everyone comes. This is not a once in a while thing either, we hang out together multiple times a week. I even sleep on Owen’s couch most nights. The culture is the most important part of this team. Being a new program, the players on our team who took a fifth year were the first players to be on the team. They built this program to what it was today. That is why Owen feels like it is so important to keep the culture alive. “We have built something we enjoy, and I want to keep it that way.” With a large class of twenty-one freshman coming in next year, Owen is going to have to find ways to get them integrated into the culture and have them value the team and people on it. Owen had many reasons to play a sport in college but there was one that stood out to me when I asked him why he decided to play a sport in college. “We get the chance to do something not a lot of people have the chance to do.” This really stood out to me because I did not realize how little people get this opportunity. It is a great chance to be a part of something, learn to push yourself, face challenges, and ride with your team through the good and the bad. I asked Owen if he felt that lacrosse has helped him off the field. “The best things I’ve learned on the field was body language.” Even when you are mad or annoyed on the field you must keep a level head, or you will just spiral out of control. The lessons you learn on the field are applicable to your life off the field as well. Arguably, they are even more important off the field. You cannot just spit out how you feel whenever you feel like it. Lacrosse, being an intense sport, brings out people’s emotions. Most of the time, anger. You are not able to act out on these emotions because they will most likely get you a penalty or make you play worse. When on a team, you don’t control your emotions for you, but for your team. Not thinking about the game and trying to hurt someone on the other team leads to your team being penalized because you couldn’t hold it together. If you are a good teammate, the last thing you would want to do is hurt the team. The process of interviewing someone I have grown so close to in the past year was a great opportunity for me to further learn about his life and become that much closer with him. I will be living with Owen next year, so this was a great opportunity to see his thoughts about our team and this school. This story is great for younger athletes, specifically, the incoming freshmen to read and learn about what it means to be a college athlete. I hope that the future athletes on our team will come to learn the importance of the culture the team has built, as well as the responsibilities of being a college athlete.