By Andrew Coen
The high school will play host to a Saturday-afternoon battle between Cornell and Notre Dame - an extremely rare venue for a matchup between two top-ranked college teams.
The game will be something of a homecoming for several Cornell and Notre Dame players from Long Island, including 2005 Hewlett graduate Max Seibald. Seibald enjoyed a stellar career at Hewlett, helping the squad win the 2005 Nassau County championship. He continued his excellent play at the college level, winning the Ivy League Rookie of the Year Award and earning second-team All-American honors as a freshman.
"I [can't] wait to get a chance to play on that field," said Seibald of his return to Hewlett. "I never thought I'd be able to compete on that field again."
Cornell head coach Jeff Tambroni said the arrangements for the game at Hewlett arose in part because both Notre Dame and Cornell are located in difficult places to travel to, with both northern Indiana and upstate New York lacking a major airport. Given the logistical challenges, the teams agreed to play their game earlier this year at a neutral site, a Chicago-area high school about a 90-minute drive from the Notre Dame campus.
Tambroni said the game drew such a huge crowd that the schools decided to play their 2007 game at another high school, and decided on Long Island because players from both teams as well as numerous alumni are from the area. Cornell currently has seven players on its roster from Long Island, including Seibald, and Notre Dame also carries seven players from the region.
Jack Seibald, Max's father, said that Tambroni contacted him to explore having Hewlett host the game in large part because of the school's FieldTurf surface, which was installed in 2003 and makes it easier to play a game in March, when weather could be an issue. When Hewlett-Woodmere officials supported the idea of hosting the game and agreed to work out the logistics, both universities put the game on their schedules.
"They have a beautiful site that can accommodate the fans," Tambroni said. "[The district] has been great at dealing with our parents and administration."
"It gives us an opportunity to display our field, display our program," said Hewlett High School Athletic Director Jeff Malis. "It's just going to be a great opportunity."
It will be the second time in three years that a Long Island high school has hosted a college lacrosse game, after Manhasset High School was the site of a 2005 battle between Georgetown and Vermont. Manhasset head coach Bill Cherry said the game produced lots of excitement in his North Shore community, and he expects the same will occur at Hewlett. "It's a great recruiting tool," Cherry said.
Malis said that Hewlett's stadium can seat 800 to 850 spectators, but the district hopes to be able to install some portable bleachers to increase the capacity for the Cornell-Notre Dame game. He said that if the weather cooperates, there should be a huge turnout, because lacrosse is popular in the area and because of the large number of Cornell and Notre Dame fans in the region.
"If we did not have that FieldTurf field, we would not have been in the running," said Seibald, a member of the District 14 Athletic Facilities Committee that helped raise the funds for the field's surface. "[This game] highlights the fact that we are a district that cares about our kids and is willing to invest in our facilities."
