Midweek thoughts on a lacrosse dynasty, Celtics greatness, and British cars:
The 11 seniors on La Salle Academy’s 2024 lacrosse team wanted to be better than good, better than great. They had already won three state championships. What was left to prove?
“This team knew if they won convincingly, they could be the best team ever.”
Those were the words coach Steve O’Donnell used this week when asked the secret to this La Salle team’s dynastic success.
For the last two months, the Rams won convincingly. They started March 30 with a 6-5 victory over traditional Long Island power and 11th-ranked Garden City. They ended June 1 with a 19-1 romp over archival Moses Brown for La Salle’s 12th consecutive Division I State Championship.
In between they overwhelmed their seven Rhode Island opponents. Nine times in 16 league and playoff games they scored at least 20 goals. Their lowest output was 17 against Bishop Hendricken and Moses Brown. The most goals they allowed was six by Hendricken and East Greenwich.
They humbled Moses Brown, the second-best team in the state, 23-5, 17-1 and 19-1.
They finished with a 19-1 record. In addition to Garden City they defeated Massachusetts powers Boston College High, 9-8, and nationally 12th-ranked St. John’s Prep, 11-10 in overtime. They squandered a 10-3 third-quarter lead in that one.
La Salle’s only loss was to nationally-ranked Cheshire (Conn.), 14-13. The Rams were ranked No. 24 in the nation before that setback.
Overall La Salle scored 403 goals and allowed 96, an average of 20.1 goals for and 4.8 against. Big halftime leads enabled backups to see the field in the second half of most games. All 35 varsity players earned a letter.
“Probably the best team in my history, based on results and who we played,” O’Donnell said. He credits his son Cody, a La Salle and Bryant lax alum, for the Rams stingy defense.
“We were a very good program over several years, and then I brought Cody on as defensive coordinator and co-head coach. Since then is when we have taken it to another level. Our aggressive defensive play sets up our fast-paced offenses,” O’Donnell said.
Impressive, right? But the numbers tell only part of Chapter 12 of the La Salle dynasty. The rest of the story involves high-school boys buying into old school messages of discipline, expectations, dedication, teamwork, sacrifice and following rules.
O’Donnell, 64, has delivered variations of those messages since 2008. He is is a La Salle alum who played lacrosse at the University of New Haven on his way to becoming a prison guard, Rhode Island State Trooper, State Police undercover investigator, Superintendent of the State Police, chief of the U.S. Marshals in Rhode Island, CEO of the Greater Providence YMCA, a founder of the RI Bulldogs lacrosse club, and a security specialist for a Boston firm and his own private practice.
“It never gets old,” he said of winning. “The school allows us to coach and manage these kids. We set expectations and stay with it. What I mean is, these are our rules. This is what we are going to do. Come to practice. Pay attention. Work hard. Whatever the rules are. We are rules guys.”
La Salle players are not perfect. When they break a rule, they pay — not with laps around the field or dozens of pushups. O’Donnell doesn’t believe in physical punishment. Instead, he withholds playing time, the carrot that every high-school athlete craves.
“You don’t play by the rules, you don’t play. That’s crushing much more than making the whole team run,” he said.
Senior leadership on and off the field is critical to the team’s success. This year, La Salle’s prom was the night before the Division I championship game. The seniors begged for one last practice the day before the prom. “I asked the kids not to dance so they wouldn’t pull anything [like a muscle]. Just do the slow dances,” O’Donnell said, chuckling softly.
The Rams listened. Nobody pulled a muscle or sprained an ankle, one reason why those 11 seniors and their 24 junior, sophomore and freshman teammates are the best La Salle lacrosse team ever.
The Boston Celtics must win the NBA Championship. It’s time.
Before the increasing noise about this Celtics team belonging among the NBA’s all-time greats becomes a deafening roar, can we agree on this single simple point?
The Celtics have to beat Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and the rest of the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals, which start Thursday night at TD Garden. If they win the title, then they can think about joining the great Celtics, Lakers, Bulls, Spurs, 76ers championship teams of yore.
If they lose — always a possibility in the last best-of-seven of the season — these Celtics will join the 1991-1994 Buffalo Bills on the back bench of futility. Those Bills lost consecutive Super Bowls to the Giants, Redskins and Cowboys (twice).
The Celtics’ time is now. They have been in the Eastern Conference finals six times in eight seasons. They lost the 2022 NBA Finals to Golden State. Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown are in the prime of their NBA lives. They are All-Stars. Tatum is All-NBA this year. Brown, snubbed by All-NBA voters this season, is playing like a man with something to prove. Each can put up 40 a night.
Derrick White and Jrue Holiday are defensive stoppers. Center Al Horford has done a nice job filling in for big man Kristaps Porzingis, who has missed the playoffs with a strained calf muscle and whose overall health remains questionable after 38 days off.
Standing between the Celtics and the franchise’s 18th championship banner is the formidable pair of Doncic, five-time All-Star and All-NBA first teamer, and Irving, the former Celtic and a constant scoring threat.
Boston posted the best record in the NBA — 64-18 — while Dallas posted the fifth-best in the West — 50-32 — though they went 21-9 after trade deadline acquisitions improved the team’s defense. The Celtics beat Miami, Cleveland and Indiana to get to the Finals. Dallas dispatched the Los Angeles Clippers, Oklahoma City and Minnesota. Neither the Celtics nor the Mavs have had to play a seventh game this spring.
The Celtics 17th and last NBA title was in 2008, the year of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. Dallas won its only championship in 2011.
The Celtics are healthy for the most part, deep, rested and eager to shed the can’t-win-the-big-one label. The Mavericks won’t go quietly, but they will go. Start preparing for a drought-ending duck boat parade, Boston. Celtics in seven.
The British are coming! The British are coming!
I am not a car guy. If it’s safe, gets me where I want to go and has enough space for grandkids and stuff, it’s a great car.
But when the folks who cherish British cars roll through Bristol this weekend in their MGs, Triumphs, Astin Martins, Minis and other classics, I’ll stop, look and smile.
The British Motorcars Club of New England will gather again at Bristol Town Beach Friday morning before setting off for a tour of the nearby Massachusetts towns of Westport and Dartmouth and returning to Bristol via Little Compton and Tiverton. Drivers will stop at the Bristol Veterans Home on Metacom Avenue mid-afternoon and then parade to Independence Park on Bristol Harbor for an evening street party.
Cars will be on display all day Saturday at Colt State Park. I’m sure drivers of these mostly small cars will be delighted to share stories about their adventures in a world of SUVs and pickup trucks. As Faith Lamprey, who still drives the road hugging MG she bought in 1980, told me recently, “I can see my reflection in the hubcaps of trucks.”
Lamprey is the advertising director of Harrisville-based British Marque Car Club News. Bruce Vild, her husband, is the publisher and executive editor of the monthly newspaper.
Admission to all events is free.
