During my time in High School I have learned that some students strive for excellence, while some are content with meritocracy. Some players go through their entire four years in High School trying and hoping to be average. They work for nothing but to vanish in the wallpaper and not be seen just sitting and staring out the window during the long 5th period before lunch begins. They sit in the classroom looking for one single thing. Most sit and stare and never find that one thing that will change their lives, and then, once and a while, there is a student that finds it.

While I have worked with the Pittsford Lacrosse Team, I have found that a lot of things that happen in school are also applicable on the lacrosse field. Most players come back from year to year, just playing. They don't understand why they are there; they don't understand the driving force. When asked why they play they say, "I have always played" or respond with the ever popular, "I don't know" that always seeps into the High School students' vocabulary.

Once in a while there is a player, a student, a person that loves the game and understands why he plays, why he returns year after year. He comes to play for the love of the game. He returns not because he always had but because that is what he loves. Lacrosse is what he lives for. It is the one thing that changes him, that forces him to think and to grow.

We have had only a few players that feel that love, over the past 25 years. We have seen them once in a while. Each year there is that athlete who has a flicker of love and desire; those are the athletes that coaches love to teach. For they are the athletes that, for at least a brief moment, begin to understand that it isn't that he plays, it is why he plays, that is important. I have seen players that truly do love the game. I have seen players whose lives are consumed with the love of the game. They are the students that listen to the teacher, who strive to learn and to grow, and get as much as they can out of life as well as lacrosse.

Love of the game is rare in players, but once it is attained, it is forever a part of them. It spreads and consumes their lives. When they awake they think of it, when they close their eyes to sleep, they dream about it. When they find that one thing that consumes them, they hold on to it. They keep it forever because no other feeling will ever come close.