Very Young Monomoy Boys Lacrosse To Play For Standards, Not Scores

HARWICH – High school sports lineups, in certain circumstances, have been and will continue to be tagged with the “young team” label. But in the case of Monomoy boys lacrosse this spring, the description is pretty warranted.

It isn’t just that the Sharks have no seniors — not a single one — on the team this season, though that would be an aberration on its own for any program. It’s also that Monomoy rosters nine eighth graders and eight freshmen of the 26 players overall. There are three sophomores. The group’s old guard are the six juniors.

The team is young. Really young. 

The Sharks opened their season Monday with a 22-4 loss to Dennis-Yarmouth, who — by contrast — listed four juniors and four seniors.  

“Learning a lot day by day, right?” Monomoy head coach Chris Harlow said. “And that's kind of our thing, is just understanding that not that the score doesn't matter, but we're not keeping our standard based off the score. So our motto right now is play to a standard, not a score.”

Not only are the Sharks abundant in eighth graders and freshmen, many players are new to lacrosse in the first place, having departed other spring sports to join the team. A couple kids came from tennis and a couple came from baseball, according to Harlow. There’s a couple other players who play football but are brand new to lacrosse as well.

Lacrosse, though, can so easily be pictured as an amalgamation of different sports. The game has the contact of football or hockey, the hand-eye coordination of baseball or tennis, the offensive and defensive strategies of basketball and a field layout like soccer.

“It's cool to watch the transition of these kids from athletes to lacrosse players,” Harlow said. “We're not there yet, but I'm confident that we will be soon.”

So what does it actually mean for a lacrosse team to field so many younger players? Size, for one, will be an obstacle. Older players, naturally, have had more time to grow and will be bigger athletes. 

And with the youth and lack of experience in the sport for some of the players newer to the game, Monomoy will keep their “systems at a pretty basic level,” Harlow said.

“Really starting at square one with a lot of these guys, and build on it once we get that down,” Harlow said. “And I'm confident that in two, three years, these guys will be playing at an incredibly high level, and they'll know a lot of lacrosse. But at this point in time, we're just trying to learn the game and [get] better every day.”

The Sharks finished 11-7 last season, qualifying as a No. 25 seed for the Division 4 state tournament, where they fell in the first round to No. 8 Littleton. Seven senior starters (of nine seniors total) powered that group. Their departure as a class clearly left something of a hole, although the senior-less team this year wasn’t a surprise. The 2025 team rostered zero juniors.

“Definitely a lot of guys being thrown into positions that they don't have all that much experience in, but I mean, there are a lot of guys who are stepping up in big ways, who weren't on the team last year or were pulled up towards the end of the year and [are] just kind of learning the ropes,” Harlow said. “And they're the guys that we're leaning on right now, and a lot of them are doing an excellent job.”

Harlow said the team has a core group of players who have stepped up as leaders, led by junior captain Brodie LaValley. Other important voices in the locker room include sophomore Izaiah Freeman, junior Nick Garneau, junior Emmett Giorgio and junior Harrison Beaumont (the Sharks’ goalie).

“Those four guys, we're still determining if we're going to be giving away more letters, but whether they get them or not, those guys are leaders of the team and of the program, and they're guys that we're confident in for setting the standard of what it means to be a part of this team,” Harlow said.

That standard, not the scores, will be what Monomoy values as they grow through this year.

“Young team, young program, learning a lot every day, and I'm sure that we’ll be a different story by the end of the season,” Harlow said.