Completed Event: Men's Lacrosse versus Georgetown on May 10, 2025 , Loss , 12, to, 16
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Final
Men's Lacrosse
12
vs Georgetown
16
Corey: Words Can't Describe Loss
5/28/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Lacrosse
by Mike Corey
BALTIMORE - There is no consortium of words to adequately describe the agonizing lost just suffered.
It is not the game, nor the championship, that fuels the enormity of the despair. Rather, the pain comes from the inability for the men's lacrosse team to deliver the desired gift to their trio of former teammates, to their coach - past and present alike - to their families, to their school, to themselves.
They were just one shot off the crossbar away.
“Like in life, sometimes the ball hits the pipe and bounces the other way and sometimes it doesn't,” head coach John Danowski said after the game.
In time, the sting will pass, assuaged by the peace that will surely come with the realization of what Coach John Danowski and his young men have won, what they won long ago.
“The most phenomenal group of young men I have ever had the privilege to be near, love, or respect, or affection that I have for these kids - it will run through my core for the rest of my life,” Danowski said through tears. “To know what they went through last spring, and to act and carry themselves the way they did all year-round was unbelievable. And they've done a real good job with that. The pressure that was on them, how people talked about them...and all they did was persevere all year. This isn't Hollywood; there are no storybook endings for these kids, and for that I'm sad. But I've never been around a group of adults who have carried themselves, every day for a year with the world watching - I don't think they made a misstep along the way.”
The way has been long and hard. But both Duke and Danowski were fortunate to find one another for this season. And as Danowski said in February, he would not have taken the job had his son not been a Blue Devil.
And that decision has made all the difference.
“It was an opportunity to be with my son and his friends,” Danowski said. “Those other kids, I think of them as my sons just as I did of all of my players and treated them that way. To see them hurting that way at the end is difficult, but it's all just a game. But let's face it, maybe this had more meaning than other games, than other championship games.”
It meant that when it was over, and when seniors Matt Danowski and Ed Douglas were asked what was going through their minds when the final whistle blew, when they dropped to their knees and tried to absorb the loss, they lamented not the game, but the loss of one another.
“I think the hardest part was probably realizing we wouldn't be able to spend another practice with the guys on the team,” Douglas said. “Real sense of emptiness I guess right at the end there. Coach reminded us what a great season it was, we can be proud of ourselves, but it certainly hurts.”
The moving on and away is the common denominator for any graduating athlete, and is common fodder for those who have lost in postseason games. Such rhetoric tends to lack sincerity. There was no doubting that today.
A first-half riddled with dropped and errant passes, an insufficiently responsive defense and an inability to win face-offs put Johns Hopkins in a 10-4 lead. The Blue Devils banded together, into the breach once more, one final time, and willed themselves into an 11-11 tie.
An untimely turnover here, and a shot off the bar there, and the season was complete.
The triumphs over the course of the year, and the triumph of spirit punctuated with the manner in which they played, will be lost on many. There will be no primetime specials praising these men, nor will there be hyperventilating commentators languishing them in adulation with equal furor as those same commentators skewered them with unconscionable ugliness. Indeed, those pundits of putridity will remain on the air, and ignore the true story they've failed to tell all along.
So it goes.
As observers and fans, we can always appreciate what this team of 41 did, however, and how the Blue Devils did it: with the highest quality of class, with unswerving effort, with a dedication to excellence, with one ball off the pipe that bounced the wrong way.
“It's tough for you guys to understand,” Douglas told the media. “You haven't been through what we've been through. To know the bond that we share with these guys; I can't describe in words how much these guys mean to me. I'm gonna miss it.”
We're gonna miss it, too.
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