Surviving School

Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with my last blog of the year. Looking back on my time as a freshman, I can honestly say it was nothing like how I thought it would be. It felt like my first year at college went by in a blink of an eye. Admittedly, I didn’t feel that way at first. I had a crazy start to college and not necessarily in a fun or good way. If you recall, I had suffered a seizure and sprained my wrist during the 2 nd week of school. Because of my anger, I alienated teammates and even coaches. I was not into school and felt I had no one here to talk to or relate to me. Not wanting to give up, I worked to turn that all around. I ended my 1 st semester with a 3.6 GPA , I rebuilt my relationships with teammates and coaches and through that struggle I realized if I put in the work, I could do anything. The 2 nd semester started  so quickly that I barely remembered the 1 st semester ending. Thankfully, I got off on a better foot. I could focus on developing my relat...

Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with this week’s blog. Today I will be talking about our game against Capital University. This game was a must-win if we wanted a shot at getting a bye-week for playoffs. We needed to not only beat Capital but also beat Baldwin Wallace the following Wednesday. We came into this game a little nervous, but deep down we all knew we would beat them. If you don't know Capital lacrosse, then let me enlighten you. They take a bunch of cheap shots; they yell and curse at you and even disrespect our coaching staff. Hearing that, I bet you know how the game went down. We came out of the gates slow and allowed them to score a decent amount on us early. They even were up 1 goal at the half which was not good because we let their shooters heat up. Luckily, our coach yelled at us in the locker room and put into perspective how important this game was because we were the better team. When we came back to the field we went to work and slowly beat down Cap...

  Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with this week’s blog. Today I will be talking about our game against John Carroll. This was an important game because John Carroll generally finishes first in the OAC. If we beat them, we essentially become the best team in the league. Our coaches chose to have us stay the night before on this trip so that we could be well rested and healthy. After practice on Friday, we headed to our hotel and arrived at 10:30 p.m. The plan was to give us some time to relax and eat before going to bed. Sleep was not what I got that night because my housemates were my actual roommate and our next-door neighbor. This arrangement was doomed from the start and we probably got to bed only around 1:00 a.m. Unfortunately, one of my roommates lost his tie and the other forgot to bring his full suit when we woke. This is a huge deal, because when we don't all match in our suit and tie before a game, our coach becomes furious and will not let that person play. T...

Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with this week’s blog. As I have stated in my last few blogs I am still injured and being forced to wear this waxy splint cast around my thumb. Let me just tell you, it is the most frustrating thing to deal with, but I am doing my best to deal with it. Just imagine not being able to write with your dominant hand or having to eat food like what must look so weird because you’re not a lefty. That last part might just be me, but you get to the point. On the field, it is frustrating too, but I am still trying to participate. Even though I am not allowed to do physical contact, I can still improve by continuing to run a lot every day to stay in shape. I have also been using an agility ladder which is now my favorite thing in the world. I have not used one since I was playing youth football. It is a crazy good tool for midfielders because it really helps improve footwork which is important whether you play offense or defense. For example, I tried do...

  Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with this week’s blog. Just like last week I found myself being more student than athlete and mostly an observer because I still have a fractured thumb. You already knew that, so I will pick up from where I left off. Our first conference game against Mount Union was awesome. The energy was so high. We knew if we beat Mount Union that people would understand we were legit. We were slow to start and risked them getting into a good rhythm which wasn't good. Thankfully, our team picked it up later in the first half and pulled ahead. It was awesome to see our team click on all cylinders. We were moving the ball extremely well and our defense was locking down. Before I knew it, we had won the game and even beat them by double digits. The locker room was ecstatic. Even our coach was dancing and laughing. The only problem, I wasn’t feeling as excited as the other guys. Don't get me wrong, it was an awesome moment, but the fact that I had to ...

Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with another blog. Admittedly, I am more student than athlete this week, because I fractured my thumb in practice and now must sit out for three weeks. Before I get into those details, I will pick up from where I left off last time about the team cancelling their game against us. After that, I promised myself that I was going to have a great week of practice. We started on Sunday because our coach wanted to keep us sharp but also wanted to keep us from having too much fun Saturday night. I was eager to showcase what I had been working on for weeks. Our conference games were coming up and I was itching to get some playing time. Sunday’s practice was review and competition drills to get us ready to play Mount Union in the first conference game. Monday was similar but with super high energy. Everyone was giving it their best effort, especially me. I made sure no one was going to beat me in sprints or out hustle me to groundballs. I was playing we...

Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with another blog. Today I will be talking about our first week back from Spring Break. It was a sluggish and sad week, not just because the team was kind of down because we lost the last two games of the trip, but most of us also had a good amount of homework due that Monday. So, we all just went to bed Saturday night when we returned to rest up and get some sleep. Me being the great student I am, ended up resting most of Sunday as well, so had to get my work done late but was in bed by midnight. At Monday’s practice we prepared for our next two games. The first was a short trip to Indiana on Wednesday night against Trine which we won handily. Saturday’s game was to be back on the road again to New York to play Medaille. Surprisingly they only had a roster of 15 players, and you need a minimum of 10 players to play a game. Since we are a roster of 50 players, I figured this was going to be a great opportunity for me to get a lot of playing ti...

Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with another blog. Today I will be talking about the Ohio Northern Men's Lacrosse team’s Spring Break adventures. Let me say it was one to remember. The bus ride to Maryland was brutal – well at least for me it was. I had to sit behind our trainer on the bus to our first hotel. It was awful. Every time I went to rest my head on the seat, he would push back to get comfortable. This meant I wasn't going to get any sleep on the bus. Luckily, some of my teammates brought fun movies for us to watch. That feeling of happiness was short lived though because our coach wouldn’t play any of our choices. He wanted to put on his own movies which where all about the military. That meant the whole trip I had to hear loud gun shots. It was tough to sleep through that, unless you were my bus mate falling asleep on me. Once we got to our first hotel, everyone was happy to just get off the bus and go to sleep. Sadly, that didn't get to happen either...