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Summer League, Travel Team Open Lacrosse Opportunities
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires.com Sports
11:23AM / Wednesday, August 17, 2016
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DALTON, Mass. -- For the record, ODB defeated the Wahconah boys lacrosse team Tuesday in the championship game of the Berkshire Summer League.
 
But the league is really less about records and more about having a chance to play.
 
“The kids just want to stay active,” Wahconah varsity coach Zach Sondrini said as his players prepared for a 45-minute playoff game at Nessacus Middle School Tuesday evening. “They want to stay busy. And that’s our goal: to give them an opportunity to pick up sticks in the off season.”
 
Sondrini does a number of things to provide those kinds of opportunities.
 
In the winter, he runs two high school box lacrosse leagues at The Infield on Lyman Street in Pittsfield, where owner Mike Massery “gives us a good rate,” Sondrini said.
 
Tuesday marked the end of the third season for the Berkshire Summer League, which attracts junior high, high school and alumni from Dalton, Pittsfield, Adams-Cheshire and South County.
 
And this year, Sondrini and other local enthusiasts started a club travel program with teams at the third-/fourth-, fifth-/sixth- and seventh-/eighth-grade levels.
 
“We played in three tournaments - in Saratoga [N.Y.], the UMass Gorilla Classic and Fort Devens, which is actually run by a former Dalton guy,” Sondrini said of the Berkshire Knights travel squad.
 
“We pull kids from all over. We had a lot of Dalton kids, a lot of Adams-Cheshire kids, a couple of Mount Greylock kids who played for us and a bunch of South County kids. All the high school coaches helped out.”
 
Pittsfield High’s Scott Aitken, Hoosac Valley’s John Alibozek and Sondrini each helped out coaching one of the travel teams, as did a couple of former Lee High coaches, Sondrini said.
 
“We’re all trying to give back because we’re trying to build it -- just kids playing,” he said. “That’s the name of the game. Pick up a stick. We’re building it. They’ve just got to show up.”
 
On Tuesday, Sondrini was disappointed but accepting of the fact that the Berkshire Summer League’s South County team could not field a squad for playoff night. South County was scheduled to play Wahconah in the opener, but since the Dalton team is one of the league’s biggest, Sondrini split it in two for an intra-squad game where he played goal for one of the teams.
 
The evening also featured games involving Pittsfield, Hoosac Valley and the ODB team, which Sondrini describes as “a bunch of old guys.”
 
He had no hesitation putting a sixth-grader on the field against high school graduates because the league -- officiated by high school referees -- has minimal contact. It focuses more on passing and shooting skills, although the players are protected by equipment.
 
“It’s not a hitting league,” Sondrini said. “That’s better for me anyway. The sport in general is trying to get away from that.”
 
He admits that the summer league’s location at Nessacus gives Wahconah an advantage when it comes to numbers, and it was no surprise to see the home team advance to the final, where ODB’s Mike Bakaletz scored with 47 seconds left to give his team an 8-7 win.
 
And while Sondrini’s goal is to build the sport throughout the county, there is no doubt that he is pleased to see the enthusiasm among players who will be returning to or percolating up to the Wahconah varsity.
 
“It helps that I run it in their back yard, obviously,” he said. “But it’s cultural. We’ve got a sixth-grader and two eighth-graders and alumni who come back to play. It’s part of building the culture of the sport for us at Wahconah and in Dalton.”
 
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