Clarke shows its character

When low turnout forced Clarke boys’ lacrosse to cancel its JV season and combine the athletes from all grades into a single varsity team, coach Tim O’Malley wondered how the players would react. Would the younger kids be upset not having their own team? Would the older players be OK sharing time with the lessexperienced ones?

It turned out, O’Malley said, to be a situation that benefited everybody. “They really turned what could have been a negative situation of combining teams into a very positive situation,” he said.

The upperclassmen, he said, became de facto assistant coaches for the would-be junior varsity players. JV head coach Bill Arnold joined the coaching staff alongside O’Malley and Joe Hasbrouck to help manage the extra players.

But it was the student athletes, O’Malley said, who embraced the circumstance. “They’re the ones who made it work,” said the coach. “We just guided them along. Day in and day out they made it work.”

Clarke wrapped its season on May 15 with a 9-5 record, 5-3 in conference, finishing one game shy of the postseason. The Rams had hit the ground running, winning six of their first seven games to open the season, racking up a lopsided goal differential of plus-34.

“A lot of it came down to winning a lot of faceoffs and controlling a lot of ground balls early in the year,” said O’Malley, who also praised the performance of his senior goaltender and four-year starter, Richard Sullivan.  

Sullivan, he said, did not miss a single game in his high school career, and was one of the players who stepped up as a leader when the teams combined this year.

Much of the offensive success was due to the face-off prowess of senior Rico Dalipi, who, O’Malley said, contributed to an extra 10-15 possessions per game by winning draws.

Come midseason, Clarke would hit a bit of a rut, dropping four of five games, including a 10-5 loss at Plainedge that sorely damaged its playoff hopes. But the rough patch was mostly a byproduct of tougher competition, said O’Malley, rather than substandard play.

Indeed, the team ended the season playing its best lacrosse, winning its final two games, including an 11-6 win over Division on May 14 that O’Malley said was the team’s best performance of the season. “We just clicked. Every phase of the game we played at an extremely high level,” he said. “We were really playing well when the season came to a close.”

Having the opportunity to watch the younger players every day in practice, O’Malley said, afforded him greater insight of the talentcoming down the pipeline, while providing them a greater platform to showcase their abilities. One freshman, defenseman Joe Patti, ended up starting in the second half of the season after he impressed the coaches in practice.

Besides Sullivan and Dalipi, most of Clarke’s top players will be returning. Junior attackman Anthony Caputo led the team with 65 points this season. Junior Sean Russell excelled while filling in at nearly every position – “He did everything but drive the bus,” O’Malley laughed – and junior Arton Dalipi (Rico’s cousin) is a ground ball hawk who hustles up and down the field.

“I think we should be very strong offensively next year,” O’Malley said. “Hopefully we can maintain possession and take pressure off our defense.”