Brett Carroll
Staff Writer
The winning foundation continues to develop for the boys’ lacrosse program at East Brunswick High School.
Two straight winning seasons have provided the momentum for this current group of Bears and their coach, Rory Murray.
“I’d love to say that a championship is out there,” Murray said. “That’s always something that’s on the back of our minds. However, the big thing right now for us is to continue to build the program.”
In 2017, East Brunswick finished with an 11-6 record and gained a berth in the South Jersey, Group 4 state sectional tournament where the Bears were knocked out by Old Bridge High School. East Brunswick posted an 11-8 record in 2016 and also earned a spot in the South Jersey, Group 4 state sectionals.
Murray has witnessed the growth of the program.
“Since [senior midfielder] Timmy [Smith] has been here, the program has grown a lot stronger. We continue to improve year-in and year-out. We posted back-to-back winning seasons for the first time in a long time, and we just want to continue our growth,” Murray said. ” If that means competing for a title, that would be great. But, as long as we keep getting better, than that’s all that we’re looking for right now.”
Smith is also confident going into this spring season.
“We have our whole defense returning this year, ” Smith said. “Plus, we’re really strong on offense. We’re young, but we’re learning. We just got to focus on one game at a time, and stay focused. If we do that, we should meet all of our goals this year.”
Murray is calling for his players to be consistent.
“Consistency is our most important thing,” Murray said. “We need to be consistent on both sides of the ball. We can’t have any games this year where we have let downs on either side of the field. We have a lot of depth this year, and it’s great to see the boys push each other every day. It’s really helping us. We’re only going to get better by doing that.”
“We have to be able to depend on each other,” Smith said. “We have to be able to rely and trust each other. One family. One goal.”
East Brunswick’s attack will be guided by midfielder Sean Kelliher and attackmen Jack Solimini and Timmy Gudzak.
“We brought back four players from last year that all scored 30 goals,” Murray said. “So we have a lot of firepower coming back. We also returned our starting defense from last year as well. A lot of them are juniors so they’ve played varsity for two years now already. They are all very smart, and should be able to help our team out tremendously.”
The Bears will open play this spring with a home game on April 3 against South Brunswick High School at 12 p.m.