Under the Arch: Burritos, Michelin Man, Honing Skills
11/22/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Lacrosse
Nov. 22, 2016
Brian Archer is a senior (how about that?) faceoff man for the University of Michigan men's lacrosse team and is in his fourth year of scribing excellence in Under the Arch. This installment serves as the first edition for the 2017 season. Archer, a Brighton, Michigan, native, provides periodic commentary, musings and observations from an inside perspective on Team Six. The program can also neither confirm nor deny that he writes his installments under the actual arch in the Diag on campus, as moped parking can be tricky in the surrounding area.
November, the time of the year when we, as players, are getting a lot of small group skill-work done with our positional coaches, lifting our heaviest in the weight room with Bo and puking up last night's BTB burrito on the field after conditioning sessions (FYI: sprint workouts in the sandpit actually provide a nice salon-like exfoliation experience for those calloused feet). November also seems to be the month when nagging injuries pop up in droves. Walking out of the training room looking like the Michelin Man with four different ice bags wrapped around parts of your body you didn't even know existed is a feeling all too familiar. You know what they say, 21 is the new 40, only in this case a midlife crisis usually consists of dollar slices from Backroom purchased with spare change found in the bottom of the laundry hamper in the locker room.
With us being in eight-hour weeks, we find there's a little more time to get non-lacrosse tasks taken care of, including: attending extra office hours, getting a headstart on term papers and reading through your inbox of emails from companies you applied to with the subject line "Thank you for your interest, unfortunately..." This blog is now getting a little too close to home -- end paragraph.
Something new we've been doing on Friday's when we don't have scheduled team practices is getting in for some scrimmages with just the players. It's a great time to practice what we've been working on with the coaches throughout the week and gives us the opportunity to try some new skills as well. Whether it's an offensive middie staying on to get extra defensive reps, or a close defensemsn practicing getting past his attackman on the clear, everyone's working on making their game a little more well rounded.
Another new addition to the program that the lacrosse team has been so fortunate to test out is a program called Fueling Blue, all thanks to the initiative of our new rockstar performance dietician, Tiffany Ilten! On Mondays and Wednesdays when we finish at 7:45 p.m., we use a phone app set up by the athletic department that allows us to go get dinner at local restaurants and grocers. It's one of the many amazing privileges we earn here at Michigan that help us reach our full athletic potential. As long as Decker Curran keeps loading up at Chipotle, he may be in the running for "Not the Smallest Pectorals in the NCAA." Another benefit of the bountiful food supply is Andrew Hatton displaying fewer signs of being 'hangry,' which has been described as "literally so annoying" by a few of his housemates.
Boom Roasted,
Archer
