Pat Hogan heard it every day on Winter Break.

Hogan’s high school teammates and current Denver lacrosse players Andrew Huelskoetter and John Sanders lobbed a blitzkrieg of verbal bombs from, ‘We’re going to kill you guys,’ to ‘You guys have no chance in the altitude up there.’

Hogan ignored the trash talk, but he and the No. 1 Orangemen (2-0) still get a chance to respond Sunday at 3:30 p.m. when they face an eager Denver team (2-1) in the Mile High City. The game is the second half of SU’s Rocky Mountain Spring Break. SU meets Air Force (1-2) on Saturday at 1 p.m. to open the Pioneer Face-off Classic.

The trip is a change from the Spring Break ventures to Florida that SU has made the past few years. Lacrosse is booming in the Denver area, and bringing in the nation’s top team can only help it grow.

More players — like Hogan, from St. Louis — outside the typical lacrosse hotbeds like Maryland and Long Island are picking the sport up.

‘The people who are new to lacrosse are a lot more motivated to play,’ said SU attackman Josh Coffman, who grew up in lacrosse-crazed Carthage. ‘We refer to them as lax rats.’

Hogan became a lax rat in seventh grade. His brother, Vince, had just been cut from the school baseball team and started playing lacrosse.

When Vince came home boasting about his new sport, Hogan asked, ‘What the hell is this?’

‘You have to play this game,’ Vince told him.

When Hogan got involved with lacrosse, he realized, ‘You have to be a really good athlete to play. You can’t be Joe Schmoe or skater dude.’

That’s why Denver is paying for Syracuse to make the weekend trip — to convert those would-be skater dudes into bona fide lax rats.

But the Pioneers won’t just roll over for their visitors. Though they’re in their fourth Division I season and finished 6-7 last year, the Pioneers will try to exploit every advantage they can — namely, altitude — against the Orangemen.

‘I know the coaches are worried about it,’ Hogan said.

While his former high school buddies dangle the elevation factor in front of Hogan, the Orangemen have been running more to ensure they’ll be in optimum cardiovascular shape.

There’s no doubt that the Pioneers are used to the thin air. They’re led by a Colorado native, senior captain Chad Wittman, the Pioneers’ third-leading scorer each the last two years.

Coffman, one of SU’s major offensive threats, takes some responsibility for teaching the Colorado kids who may one day follow Wittman’s path. During the summer, Coffman used to work at the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse Camp.

“It was one of my favorite camps to work at,’ Coffman said. ‘Each week I’d take a project and some kid that wasn’t that good. I’d work with him the whole camp and then coming back he’d be the best player going back to the camp the next year.’

Air Force, SU’s other opponent, certainly is no better off this year than last. The Falcons struggled to a 2-13 record last year. This season, opponents have outscored Air Force, 40-20, in three games. Though Air Force returns eight seniors, it competes against up-and-coming power Notre Dame, a national semifinalist, in the Great Western Lacrosse League.

But the Orangemen know, despite all the growth potential for lacrosse out West, East Coast teams still own every national title, something Hogan can rub in his buddies’ faces.

‘It’s a whole different world,’ he said. ‘It’s a totally different game in the Midwest. Even high school, you go out East for two games and get spanked.’

-30-

Published on March 6, 2002 at 12:00 pm