The Need for Speed

SpeedLacrosse had me at the tagline “anyone, anytime, anywhere.”  I knew Casey Powell was up to something.

One Saturday in October 2015 Casey came to our town to teach us the game on an early stop of his North American Tour.  I listened intently to his instructional speech and I finally understood SpeedLacrosse.  The experience benefitted our youth organization on so many levels that it brought me immediately closer to the game.

Our barrier island youth players battled it out on a pair of 20 yard by 40 yard fields with 3’6” X 3’6” nets (which are that size for a reason) for 2 straight hours and I saw them doing things they’d never done before.  At the onset they understood a 3 on 3 game of lacrosse required a different strategy and that’s when I finally understood the method to SpeedLacrosse madness.  It happens to be twofold.

As an instructional game, Speed boils Lacrosse down to its most simple form.  You have to cover a full court with 3 players so you have to get the ball out of your zone and get it up field.  That’s difficult to defend so the scores are high - but that’s part of the fun.  Youth players can attend practices for days without scoring so this gets everyone in on the offense.  And defense.

Surgical defenders can pick your pocket if you hang your stick.  If the contact is flagrant - SpeedLacrosse calls for you to police yourselves and call a foul.   When the ball goes out of bounds - the ethos is for honesty to rule the court as to who it went out on.  SpeedLacrosse is all about keeping the game moving and getting up and down the field so the conditioning is rigorous.

Our youth players as young as 10 years old almost instinctively cut to an open area without the ball to get open.  Because of the small field they payed close attention to the side line and end lines.  They kept a tight score and quickly embraced the competitive spirit of this revolutionary game in its infancy.  It’s safe to say SpeedLacrosse brought true intensity out of players that otherwise wouldn’t have shown it. 

What would you expect?  This game is beach volleyball with sticks.  Its pickup hoops at the school yard.  Suddenly I felt like I was in the Powell home in Carthage N.Y. circa the mid 90’s in one of those “Texas Death Match” backyard tournaments you have with your mates.

Teams waiting to play stayed involved and cheered on their friends because SpeedLacrosse doesn’t only change the size of the playing field - it levels it.  The game tilts the advantage toward the quicker thinking gazelle and disarms the axe-wielding slasher.  A refreshing excitement ensues.

As a youth lacrosse training tool, SpeedLacrosse gets all the physical obstacles out of the way.  A mouthpiece, cage and gloves occupy a big portion of the youth players mind while he’s on the field.  That equipment takes years to get used to.  When you take the helmet and cage off a youth players head and give them their field of vision back that player is free to think about more important things like how to get open or when to get back in the hole to stop a fast break.  You can feel the immediate ramp in their lacrosse I.Q., or at least you can figure out how to make that leap happen. 

Down to shirts, shorts, training shoes (unless you’re playing it on the beach) and lacrosse sticks there is no fear of getting pulverized by a heat seeking Cascade helmet.  There’s no intimidating six foot carbon shaft being thrown around the cage.  This is a finesse game.  Experts want to model their Speed game after Scottie Pippen’s basketball game and that lends itself to the second method to SpeedLacrosse madness.  

Like any other game - SpeedLacrosse is going to need contribution from some legendary players for its growth.  There’s no one better to steward that ship than Casey Powell, the games founder.  I think elite players will embrace this new form of lacrosse the same way our youth league did because it inspires on court creativity at a high pace.

First, try to imagine attending a 3 on 3 SpeedLacrosse Tournament on turf under the lights that includes a set of fine-tuned Major League Lacrosse All Stars… and then get your popcorn out because once Speed takes hold that will be something to see.

At the beginner level, at the elite level and at every level in between - there is a spot on Casey Powell’s SpeedLacrosse Court for anyone who wants to improve their lacrosse skills, their lacrosse I.Q. or grow the game into the spotlight it deserves.

It's Matt Gibson - by Tony Greer

As posted on LaxMagazine.com July 21st 2015

Look, it’s a downtown Las Vegas local rolling out of Frankie’s Tiki Room like the cat that ate the canary. It’s a screenplay writer in a baseball cap that clashes with his Hawaiian shirt cruising West Hollywood. It’s the blonde pony tailed and unshaven half-Canadian crease attackman for the New York Lizards. It’s a 25-year-old well-rounded icon in Major League Lacrosse who has reinvented himself for the benefit of the team. It’s Matt Gibson and he’s not to be stopped.

‘Not to be stopped’ is in Gibson’s DNA. The son of a Cornell hockey player from the Great White North and one of five brothers, Gibson is no stranger to high-level competition. He followed his older brother Brendan’s footsteps to the level of captain of Jack Moran’s Chaminade (N.Y.) High lacrosse program and they tucked a few Catholic League Championships under their belts. With their fraternal bond and Matt’s respect for his older brother the game plan was to follow him to a college so they could be difference makers. Older brother Brendan chose a path through the Ivy League and informed Matt that he would be going to Yale.

"Yale? Are we really gonna do this?"  
  That was Matt’s first thought. He liked the Ivy League cache but Yale hadn’t won an NCAA championship in lacrosse since 1883. By design, the campaign from Point Lookout, N.Y., to New Haven, Conn., was about making an impact. The Gibson family made an immediate and lasting impact on the program by introducing their leadership on and off the field. His parents, James (who goes by "Slice") and Rosemary (who goes by "Rary" on the barrier island on the south shore of Long Island), implemented their blue-collar work ethic by running Yale Lacrosse tailgates for six years. The Gibson’s humble realism brought the program closer to its potential than it had been in years and set the stage for the team, and their cutting edge lacrosse warriors to excel. Perhaps, in that order.

As a team the Bulldogs competed in their best form in decades. Matt blazed a trail of domination and garnered most of the associated awards. You could still make a case Gibson didn’t get the recognition he deserved in college, specifically his senior year. His current Lizards teammate, Tewaaraton Award winner Rob Pannell of Cornell, captured all the headlines as the NCAA’s top attackman. Gibson garnered honorable mention recognition on the All-American list his sophomore and junior year at Yale. He was conspicuously left off the list his senior year among some of today’s heaviest hitters of the game like Peter Baum, Will Manny, Steele Stanwick, Marcus Holman, Mark Matthews, Jordan Wolf and Garret Thul. In 2012 came the mathematically accountable argument for better recognition. A chunk of the Ivy League tournament record book, an Ivy championship and first-team recognition in that league. Gibson still holds the record for most assists in an Ivy championship game (four), most points in an Ivy championship game (six), most assists in the Ivy tournament (12), and most points in an Ivy tournament (14) but for some reason he was left off the 2012 USILA All-American lists completely. The absolute truth is that Gibson is zero percent hung up on it.

Fast forward to Major League Lacrosse and you’ll find the league’s 2012 rookie of the year testing the limits of his own explosive game. Primarily a feeder and playmaker his whole life, Gibson platoons on the Lizards attack with Rob Pannell and Tom Palasek, only Gibson spends almost no time with the ball. Add the marquee player in the league, Paul Rabil, to that mix and you’ve got three of MLL’s top-10 goal scorers and then Gibson at 17th with 21 goals in a dozen games.

Since his arrival on the Lizards, Gibson has become friends with Rabil. Despite his mammoth skill and personality, Rabil and Gibson are always exchanging tricks of the trade to elevate their own game. When Rabil reverts to the simplest axiom of picking a vacant area on the field and sprinting to it to get open, Gibson takes notes. By employing that strategy in the MLL that moves at light speed, Gibson gets open more. From there his gift takes over.

You need the hands of a surgeon to either catch-and-shoot or redirect the ball past the goalie through a keyhole-sized margin of error before getting mauled. If you have seen Gibson’s legendary stick trick videos you know about his hand-eye coordination and milliseconds don’t put him in a rush. If you have seen his string of goals in 2015 – the quick sticks, the slightest redirections to the back of the net, the impossible craftiness that only finds corners – you have seen the human MLL highlight film that is No. 66 in black, white and green.

It may be his Twitter and Instagram handle, and the place his fans get a personal look at him but following @itsmattgibson alone doesn’t cover the multidimensional success story. If you want to talk movies with Gibson, you will steal his heart and attention immediately. Not watching them, writing them. As a bi-coastal professional he’s already rewritten scripts for some of Hollywood’s finest. If you can get him to tell you the story of his own original screen play "Ashtrays," you will likely ask for a ticket to opening night. Matt Gibson is eventually going to reach the higher level of success he deserves. It might be in the form of a 2015 MLL title for the New York Lizards. It might be his name up in lights on a Hollywood marquee. The beauty in Matt Gibson is that there’s no reason it can’t be both.

As a team the Bulldogs competed in their best form in decades. Matt blazed a trail of domination and garnered most of the associated awards. You could still make a case Gibson didn’t get the recognition he deserved in college, specifically his senior year. His current Lizards teammate, Tewaaraton Award winner Rob Pannell of Cornell, captured all the headlines as the NCAA’s top attackman. Gibson garnered honorable mention recognition on the All-American list his sophomore and junior year at Yale. He was conspicuously left off the list his senior year among some of today’s heaviest hitters of the game like Peter Baum, Will Manny, Steele Stanwick, Marcus Holman, Mark Matthews, Jordan Wolf and Garret Thul. In 2012 came the mathematically accountable argument for better recognition. A chunk of the Ivy League tournament record book, an Ivy championship and first-team recognition in that league. Gibson still holds the record for most assists in an Ivy championship game (four), most points in an Ivy championship game (six), most assists in the Ivy tournament (12), and most points in an Ivy tournament (14) but for some reason he was left off the 2012 USILA All-American lists completely. The absolute truth is that Gibson is zero percent hung up on it.

Fast forward to Major League Lacrosse and you’ll find the league’s 2012 rookie of the year testing the limits of his own explosive game. Primarily a feeder and playmaker his whole life, Gibson platoons on the Lizards attack with Rob Pannell and Tom Palasek, only Gibson spends almost no time with the ball. Add the marquee player in the league, Paul Rabil, to that mix and you’ve got three of MLL’s top-10 goal scorers and then Gibson at 17th with 21 goals in a dozen games.

Since his arrival on the Lizards, Gibson has become friends with Rabil. Despite his mammoth skill and personality, Rabil and Gibson are always exchanging tricks of the trade to elevate their own game. When Rabil reverts to the simplest axiom of picking a vacant area on the field and sprinting to it to get open, Gibson takes notes. By employing that strategy in the MLL that moves at light speed, Gibson gets open more. From there his gift takes over.

You need the hands of a surgeon to either catch-and-shoot or redirect the ball past the goalie through a keyhole-sized margin of error before getting mauled. If you have seen Gibson’s legendary stick trick videos you know about his hand-eye coordination and milliseconds don’t put him in a rush. If you have seen his string of goals in 2015 – the quick sticks, the slightest redirections to the back of the net, the impossible craftiness that only finds corners – you have seen the human MLL highlight film that is No. 66 in black, white and green.

It may be his Twitter and Instagram handle, and the place his fans get a personal look at him but following @itsmattgibson alone doesn’t cover the multidimensional success story. If you want to talk movies with Gibson, you will steal his heart and attention immediately. Not watching them, writing them. As a bi-coastal professional he’s already rewritten scripts for some of Hollywood’s finest. If you can get him to tell you the story of his own original screen play "Ashtrays," you will likely ask for a ticket to opening night. Matt Gibson is eventually going to reach the higher level of success he deserves. It might be in the form of a 2015 MLL title for the New York Lizards. It might be his name up in lights on a Hollywood marquee. The beauty in Matt Gibson is that there’s no reason it can’t be both.

As a team the Bulldogs competed in their best form in decades. Matt blazed a trail of domination and garnered most of the associated awards. You could still make a case Gibson didn’t get the recognition he deserved in college, specifically his senior year. His current Lizards teammate, Tewaaraton Award winner Rob Pannell of Cornell, captured all the headlines as the NCAA’s top attackman. Gibson garnered honorable mention recognition on the All-American list his sophomore and junior year at Yale. He was conspicuously left off the list his senior year among some of today’s heaviest hitters of the game like Peter Baum, Will Manny, Steele Stanwick, Marcus Holman, Mark Matthews, Jordan Wolf and Garret Thul. In 2012 came the mathematically accountable argument for better recognition. A chunk of the Ivy League tournament record book, an Ivy championship and first-team recognition in that league. Gibson still holds the record for most assists in an Ivy championship game (four), most points in an Ivy championship game (six), most assists in the Ivy tournament (12), and most points in an Ivy tournament (14) but for some reason he was left off the 2012 USILA All-American lists completely. The absolute truth is that Gibson is zero percent hung up on it.
Fast forward to Major League Lacrosse and you’ll find the league’s 2012 rookie of the year testing the limits of his own explosive game. Primarily a feeder and playmaker his whole life, Gibson platoons on the Lizards attack with Rob Pannell and Tom Palasek, only Gibson spends almost no time with the ball. Add the marquee player in the league, Paul Rabil, to that mix and you’ve got three of MLL’s top-10 goal scorers and then Gibson at 17th with 21 goals in a dozen games.
Since his arrival on the Lizards, Gibson has become friends with Rabil. Despite his mammoth skill and personality, Rabil and Gibson are always exchanging tricks of the trade to elevate their own game. When Rabil reverts to the simplest axiom of picking a vacant area on the field and sprinting to it to get open, Gibson takes notes. By employing that strategy in the MLL that moves at light speed, Gibson gets open more. From there his gift takes over.
You need the hands of a surgeon to either catch-and-shoot or redirect the ball past the goalie through a keyhole-sized margin of error before getting mauled. If you have seen Gibson’s legendary stick trick videos you know about his hand-eye coordination and milliseconds don’t put him in a rush. If you have seen his string of goals in 2015 – the quick sticks, the slightest redirections to the back of the net, the impossible craftiness that only finds corners – you have seen the human MLL highlight film that is No. 66 in black, white and green.
It may be his Twitter and Instagram handle, and the place his fans get a personal look at him but following @itsmattgibson alone doesn’t cover the multidimensional success story. If you want to talk movies with Gibson, you will steal his heart and attention immediately. Not watching them, writing them. As a bi-coastal professional he’s already rewritten scripts for some of Hollywood’s finest. If you can get him to tell you the story of his own original screen play "Ashtrays," you will likely ask for a ticket to opening night. Matt Gibson is eventually going to reach the higher level of success he deserves. It might be in the form of a 2015 MLL title for the New York Lizards. It might be his name up in lights on a Hollywood marquee. The beauty in Matt Gibson is that there’s no reason it can’t be both.

The Point Ale House & Grill
Point Lookout, N.Y.

 

#GD50 - Fare Thee Well Review

One of my philosophies as a music fan is that the real magic happens on the road.  A rainbow may have formed over the Santa Clara shows but there was enough love and energy for the Grateful Dead to light up the entire Chicago skyline during Fourth of July weekend 2015.

After all the media hype, Fare Thee Well was the perfect living tribute to the Grateful Dead’s history as an American band and celebrated the unique relationship they have with their fans.  The initial offering was twice over-subscribed.

From the original four, to stand-in guitarist Trey Anastasio, to the grand stage created by producer Peter Shapiro, to the sea of Deadheads in attendance – everything fell into place on this momentous occasion the way they often do.  Fans got what they came for.  The Grateful Dead got what they deserve.  “Everybody’s dancing…”

They turned the museum next to Soldier Field into a memorabilia mecca, the South parking lot into a beautiful freak show and they opened each night like they would have opened any outdoor show in Grateful Dead history - with plenty of daylight left on the clock and a set list built to last.  The final form of the Grateful Dead strutted out a little after seven o’clock for each show, had a group hug and proceeded to celebrate life.

From the first note they transformed the overflowing crowd at Soldier Field into what felt like a small town celebration mass in someone’s backyard complete with fireworks, calliopes, and clowns.  They opened Night One with Box of Rain to pick up with the song Jerry left off with on his final night at Soldier Field 20 years ago.  They featured Dead mashups like Scarlet > Fire and Help > Slipknot > Franklin’s for fans who live by the classics and the ‘greater than’ sign translating ‘one song into the next.’

The original four - Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzman, Mickey Hart - embraced the occasion as much as the attendees  They’ve aged but they were clearly rejuvenated for the final run with energy from shows past.  Jerry Garcia got a fitting tribute to the music he wrote and to his spirit which lives on through the bands deep tradition.  He may be gone but his impact at the heart and soul of this band won’t be forgotten.  Screens all over Soldier Field pulsed with black and white pictures of a young Jerry with matted down kinky hair and that familiar peaceful grin on his face.  “Those were the days” shared a seventy-something hippie standing next to me with flowers in her hair, clutching a metal flask.  I couldn’t imagine.

When 85% of a show’s attendees come from out of town you create the enthusiasm and attitude cocktail you need to throw a serious party.  The Grateful Dead opened the second night of celebration with Shakedown Street and it went exactly as I remembered from a Giants Stadium opener I caught in the early 90’s.  Phil dropped the first atomic bass bomb and a human waterfall of Deadheads cascaded over the padded walls onto the floor.  My personal Night Two favorites were Deal at sundown, Bird Song to start the second set, and a West L.A. Fadeaway they played so slow your blood pressure dropped.  The July 4th celebration would not have been complete without the widely predicted encore - U.S. Blues.  

“Red and white, blue suede shoes.  I’m Uncle Sam, how do you do?”

Special thanks should go to Jeff Chimenti, Bruce Hornsby and Trey Anastasio for complimenting the original four.  Chimenti and Hornsby provided keyboard action that would have made “Pigpen” and Brent Mydland proud.  Trey Anastasio standing in for Jerry Garcia, I would argue, could not have been done by another musician.  Trey’s affinity for grass roots rock and roll, for the Dead, and for Jerry’s style all speak for themselves via Phish’s music.  It’s no secret that Trey spent a lot of time learning Grateful Dead songs for Fare Thee Well.  The result was Trey brilliantly channeling Jerry but remaining true to his own style and that’s why I’ll be listening to these shows for months to come.

Like Jerry, Trey has mastered the art of the imperfect rolling guitar solo that will mash a smile right onto your face.  I lost count of how many times I got mashed in Chicago but The Music Never Stopped, Althea and Throwing Stones were the perfect tracks for Trey to showcase his creative jamming skills while staying true to Jerry’s pace and tone.  It’s no coincidence Trey took control of The Music Never Stopped.  I’m certain he drew on it more than once scribing Phish songs and he knocked the Chicago version out of the park.

By the time the final Dead show rolled around I had an anxiety thorn in my side.  This is not the time in our nation’s history to put the Grateful Dead Tour up on blocks.  It took no more than the opening chords of the Chinacat > Rider opener to calm my nerves but it wasn’t until Bob Weir released some of his philosophy on the crowd that I broke through to the other side.

During Throwing Stones Bobby sang his own line with flair: “You can buy the whole Goddamn government today.”  There is comfort in knowing that the bearded, Birkenstocked lead singer in faded jeans not only dresses like you, but also thinks a little like you too.

Throwing Stones and Bob’s line in particular led to the best decision I made all weekend – not to move my feet for the set break.  That decision put me 25 yards from Trey for four consecutive first downs: Truckin’, Cassidy, Althea and a monstrous Terrapin Station that nobody thought they would tackle their last night on stage.  Let the record state they crushed Terrapin into the Soldier Field turf.

Their set list sent a real message with the finishing touches they put on Night Three.  They segued from Space into “Blue light rain, whoa Unbroken Chain…” like the last Jerry show at Soldier in ‘95.  They followed with Days Between reflection:

“Walked halfway around the world on promise of the glow,
Stood upon a mountain top, walked barefoot in the snow.
Gave the best we had to give, how much we’ll never know.” 

The band may never know how much they gave but we all knew the show was drawing to a close.  It got harder to hold it together.  As they faded out on the final song of set two only the crowd was left singing “You know our love will not fade away…”  That was Fare Thee Well’’s most surreal moment.  I’m sure the sparse drumbeats softly fading out as the band went silent against 71k strong chanting their grungy lungs out was a unifying communal experience that won’t take place in a music venue ever again.  It was too long in the making.

Thank the rock Gods they lightened the mood with a Touch of Grey encore.  That song choice reflected on their mortality and belted out everyman’s song of survival - “I will get by.” In our best Jerry voice for good measure.

Attics of My Life came last with black and whites scrolling across the screens.  Everyone got their chance to reflect on what 50 years of the Grateful Dead meant to them.  I’m sure it meant a lot of things to a lot of people but the bands point was clearly made with three nights of masterful musicianship.  Their parting message was simple: “be kind.”

I finally wiped my face dry with my T-shirt and split.

No one's noticed, but the band's all packed and gone
Was it ever there at all?

If you were able to hold back the tears then you are a stronger man than I am.   I hopped a pedi-cab and headed for home.  The millennial hippie driving the bike joked with me as I collapsed on its bench with literally nothing left in the tank - “That’s it Bro?”

“That was it.”  He turned on the bicycle boom box as loud as it could go and we made our way up Columbus Drive to the Fare Thee Well opening tune.  The real magic always happens on the road, right?  His JBL speaker never sounded so good.

“Look out of any window…
Any morning…
Any evening…
Any day…”

I’m trying not to be sad it’s over.  I’m trying to be glad it happened.  The reality is there aren’t enough kind words to be said about 50 years of the Grateful Dead but I know we’ll be listening for 500 more.  “God Bless This Terrapin Nation” is right, Phil.

Slipkid Style 2013 - Syracuse Lacrosse

We're big on awarding LAX style points at Slipkid Screams.  After inspiring this column in 2011 (with yellow neon cleats and socks), seeing Garden City High School win the award in 2012 (with camouflage detail), the Syracuse Orangemen Lacrosse team are an early season favorite for 2013.  Checkout the Cascade Matte Grey CPX-R/Grey Nike Vapor Jersey combo.  

Maybe that's how you beat the Tigers 13-12 in a Princeton Stadium nail biter?

A Dedication to Paul Schimoler

Four time NCAA All American goalie, Class of '89 Cornell University, Ivy League Rookie of the Year, Ivy Player of the Year, gold medal winner (1990, 1994), record holder for most saves in NCAA playoffs with 85.  A world class husband, father, competitor, team mate and friend.

Long live Schimoles.

Phish New Year's Eve 2012 Madison Square Garden

PHISH 2012 MSG Holiday Run Poster

I've said it before and I will say it again.  The best iteration of PHISH is the most recent version of PHISH.  This years Holiday Run in New York City celbrated 30 years of the band, provided all of the breakaway moments I expected and ended in an explosive grand finale third set on New Year's Eve 2012.

I'll just sit on the edge of my seat until they come around next year.