Rose basketball highlights
Rose men's lacrosse gets rowdy in Jacksonville
MON. | 05-23-22 | SPORTS
On Monday, Apr. 25, Rose men’s lacrosse faced off against Jacksonville in a conference match. Going into the game, Rose was determined to get the win, as they needed three wins in a row to qualify for playoffs. The game began with both teams fighting for the win. Neither side could have predicted what would happen later in the game.
Towards the end of the game, the Rose team started to experience some issues with the referees. According to members of the team, Rose
Contributed photo
Coach Tahry Alford had unpleasant experiences with the ref in the past, which brought early dispute between the two.
“When the refs start making [poor] calls, bad things happen,” said junior Jackson Schreiber. “It just leads to frustration.”
The referees made the decision to kick out Alford after he communicated his frustrations. This was after they missed a call when freshman Aidan McCarthy was taken down and injured in a goal scoring opportunity.
“He was sticking up for us because the ref was making awful calls,” said junior Hudson Chamblee.
After this, the Rose team was fired up, which led to a spark of anger between the two teams. Players began to foul more and play with more physicality. At one point, Rose senior Cooper Alexander got a ground ball and began to run down the sideline next to Jacksonville’s bench. While he was running, he was illegally checked and tackled by a Jacksonville player. As a result, Sawyer Alexander, Cooper’s twin brother, ran onto the field to protect his brother. Sawyer had been on the sideline all season due to a torn ACL.
“Everyone was angry [that] we were getting these bad calls, and we wanted to win,” said senior Moe Abdelsalam. “We had a total of three or four people in the box, so we were three or four people down.”
When a player is in the box, that means they have been penalized and removed from the game by the referee.
Despite their differences, the teams were able to come together over a mutual dissatisfaction with the refs. After the game, both teams took a picture together, exchanged social media, and even swapped jerseys.
“Everyone thought we were going to get in a fight with them, but we took a picture with them, and made friends,” said freshman Jay Blount.
Even though Rose took the loss, they were able to make it to the playoffs through a randomized draw, where they were fueled by their duel with Jacksonville. In the first round, they defeated Seaforth High School 15-6 to advance to the next round where they lost to First Flight.
