The Mass Bay Colonials:
On a Mission Amid Mountains
by Sebastian Gates
Gathered at 5:30 in the morning in their own private corner of the Denver Renaissance lobby, the athletes sat quietly, which was unusual for this group. Their general manager paced back-and-forth, counting heads and checking his phone, slightly unnerved by the fact that this U15 squad was calm. There was more than a handful of worries. The altitude, the mid-July heat, the competition, the stage, the stakes, and the threat of poor weather were a few of the stressful concerns.
The time of day, however, was not one of them. Though it was too early for the hotel's breakfast service, the young men were wide awake. They were ready for the challenges ahead of them. They were, after all, from Massachusetts and still operating on Eastern Standard Time.
They packed themselves haphazardly into four plain white vans—a bag here, a water bottle there. The ride from the hotel to Dick's Sporting Goods Park Complex was a mere eight minutes long, but long enough for the gravitas to set in and to humble this small army of Bostonians.
The impossible-to-ignore, jagged mountains pierced the background sky, but the land in northern Denver was flat and vast. Miles away, the stadium at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park Complex emanated from the pastures like a beacon. The entire lacrosse world was simultaneously converging on this one spot and the significance was not lost on the wide-eyed players and coaches. The World Lacrosse Championships were in the United States for the first time in 16 years and there to bask in the experience were the inaugural members of the Mass Bay Colonials.
"If You Will It, It Is No Dream"
The journey began a year in advance. Mass Bay Youth Lacrosse League (MBYLL) president Tom Spangenberg polled board members about the organization's ability and willingness to take part in this once-in-a-generation event. Every four years, the Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL) gathers the rapidly-expanding pool of lacrosse nations for the crowning of a world champion. US Lacrosse was hosting the event for the first time on American soil since 1998.
In 22 years as an organization, MBYLL had never attempted to put together a competition team. In fact, the league never attempted to unite its town programs in any manner. There was the annual MBYLL Select All-Star game at Harvard Stadium, sure. But any notion of compiling an elite travel team made up of players from all over the league was completely foreign.
The board was enthusiastic and fully supportive of the project. In February 2014, a committee of three began actively crunching numbers and drafting proposals: Spangenberg, who would eventually head coach the U13 squad, MBYLL treasurer Rick Zaccardo, and Joey Picard, who would become the general manager and spokesperson for the project.
Spangenberg, Zaccardo, and Picard had an enormous pile on their plate, and time was proving to be a significant complication. At the World Lacrosse Championship Youth Festival, seasoned youth teams were already registering and submitting rosters. Elite squads (whose charter was to play competitive tournaments all over the nation) were filling up the festival's billing. Mass Bay didn't even have a name for their new team, never mind players and coaches to submit to US Lacrosse.
"We were very nervous about our ability to compete," said Picard. "We knew that this was ultimately going to be about the experience and the exposure, which are priceless. But the elephant in the room was the fact that we would be playing against teams who've been playing together, at this level, for a long, long time."