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To win the Interstate Athletic Conference championship and finish the year as the top-ranked team in the Washington, D.C. area, Landon (Md.) took Exit 16. To drivers along Interstate 270, a 34-mile stretch of highway in Maryland, Exit 16 is Father Hurley Blvd, a simple off-ramp in the D.C. suburb of Damascus.
To the Bears, it became a rallying cry.
A core group of players traveled I-270 every day to and from the Bethesda school. The group included all three starting attackmen, the top short-stick d-middie and a starting offensive middie. “Exit 16” – the exit used by a couple of the players – began as the slogan on their shooting shirts during pre-game warmups. (The other 39 players opted for ““WD>WS,” or “well done is greater than well said.”) It turned into a mindset, an ethos of grit and determination and focus. It manifested itself here: Landon (17-2) won the groundball battle in all 19 games.
By the end, even the coaches had bought in, so much that the players presented one of them with a metal lunch pail.
“Those ‘I-270’ guys had a special attachment to their exit numbers,” Landon coach Will McGettigan says. “They were five guys who were starters and played huge minutes for us. … I have to say, I don’t know much about the geography out there. Some of those guys traveled 45 minutes one-way to get here. We’re lucky they did.”
The group featured senior attackmen Kevin Miller (35G, 24A, Georgetown) and Anthony Panetti (35G, 42A, Bucknell); junior attackman Sean Murray (44G, Bucknell); senior midfielder Troy Ulisney (12G, 21A, Bowdoin); and senior shortstick defender Nathan Furgeson (Delaware).
Read more here: https://www.insidelacrosse.com/article/exit-16-landon-md-players-bring-their-lunch-pail-to-win-iac-title/63415
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