he's not my favourite writer as such,
in terms of his poetry, no finer antagonist
for his two virtues: honesty and poignant
vulgarity, and as a "drinking buddy,"
i treat him as an antagonist, you'll see why
when i write the following:

he came to america aged 2,
so obviously, knowing how immigration
works, and how adult migrants
are politely told to integrate, which
includes forgetting the mother tongue,
i came to england aged 8.
aged 4 my father emigrated to england
because the once budding steelworks
in my humble town of birth shut down,
over 10,000 out of work,
then other trades buckled under
the weight of enemy propaganda:
levis, coca cola, john paul ii, you name it.
a vague memory of my father was
impressed into me, the 1994 world cup
is my best guess on t.v.
my mother left when i was 6,
she left me a present, a dobermann pinscher
i named axel (after axl rose from guns 'n' roses),
mad *******, bit everyone
and almost took my eye out after i whipped
him for attacking my grandparent's dog,
an alsatian. so technically the earliest
cognitive developments were done
with my grandparents as my surrogates:
grandfather was high-up in society,
was a manager of one of the steelwork
conveyor belt warehouses that produced
train springs and produced the steel columns
for the 1998 world cup in france (stade de france),
but he drank, came with the job,
broke my grandmothers hand,
when i was five i marched him drunk
from his mother's birthday party through
the entire city - but i guess things happen
in your childhood that you can't alter:
his father left for america (spoke 7 languages,
so obviously not a serf), and when he wanted
to make contact his brothers lied about my
grandfather being a rascal of sorts: thief,
hooligan, so so they could get their grubby
hands on the family estate, which, rumour
was it, was rather large; and maybe seeing
the red army invade (boys who slept in barns
in hay with goats), and the ss-man in black
uniform giving him sweets (herr, bite bonbon,
although he says it like the man's name was,
yep, herr bitebonbon - child's word association,
mr. who-gives-sweets), then seeing the ss-men
in rags fleeing from the hammer and sickle dragon;
not to mention his stepfather beating him,
being a miner in the newly integrated lands of
silesia, and many more details i guess.
so anyway, they were my surrogates for some time,
i came to england aged 8 without any knowledge
of the language, learnt it pretty quick, self-taught
mostly, brain still a sponge.
father laid the foundations of dockland's light railway
at the time, but then had a chance to become a roofer.
poland was not in the european union at the time
i had to depart when i started high school,
figure out the reasons sherlock:
spent an autistic year in poland, split by not having
learned the language to a satisfactory point
and forced back to relearn a tongue i was slowly forgetting.
after a year came back to england, plan was to go
to argentina and then america the first time - alas...
but i came with a resolve to never part with my roots,
TO NEVER, EVER, FORGET MY MOTHER TONGUE.
took to studying under grandfather's motto:
matematyka, fizyka i sport / ucz sie, ucz sie, ucz sie.
so i did, went to university to study the sciences,
i could have gone to the russell group bristol or
warwick, but for the budding in me romance to have
started writing ****** poetry, i chose edinburgh.
stayed 3 years, failed french in first year after a brief
losing-my-virginity relationship with a french exchange
student of psychology, failed chemistry 2nd year,
retook exam, no summer fun, 3rd year failed chemistry,
summer in st. petersburg, retook exam and got the ******
degree: immigrants pride and pinnacle i guess.
some horrific **** after, got reduced to working in lidl
for a day, got the job, came in drunk, shoved a bunch
of pickle jars on the shop floor, cut my hand open and
left (politicians are now saying - graduate jobs for graduates,
well, evidently not). but in my 3rd year i met my love,
philosophy - took to it like fish to water, i can't lie,
this is where my antagonist comes handy - he's
being pompous and rightly so at being critical of the
poetry scene, of people studying literature to only
create more literature - i get that, but that's hardly an
attack on learning, or the sheer love of it;
and based on reading an academic work on him,
i gather he has sympathisers behind the enemy lines -
but i too don't like poetry to convey naiveness and
innocence to the world, a dreamworld where everything
comes true because of the way you think of it
a priori, since i guess when the world proves otherwise,
there is no original output of idealism, no cute puppies,
but lynched dancing bears and overworked horses
and the fear soaked eyes of cows in slaughter houses,
this *a posteriori situation leaves most former poets
crushed... crrrrrushed... they either stop writing,
continue writing lies to children, or wise-up,
become as cruel as the world, although a hermit's
cruelty - 'world, on my terms, and with whom and when
you will know that i am still here.'
but it's like that - one invents, the other gets all the credit
and the most famous one of the three doesn't know
the first one when talked about by critics and admirers,
e.g.? tristan tzara, cabaret voltaire, dada anti-war movement
of 1914, invention? cut-up. w. burroughs "perfected"
the method, and thirdly bowie used it too -
critic on television while dirges and epitaphs came:
burroughs' burroughs' burroughs'.
this world has become horrid - all those wars on paper,
all the et tu brute et tu brute et tu brutus?!
all that fame - but ask any banker about infinitesimal
calculus and he will be like... huh what?! what for?!
investments in wars, rocket projections, that kind of thing.
and about that - the horrid nature of the argument:
what came first, leibniz or newton? chicken and egg debate.
both at the same time i guess.
and it's this pervasive first in line, i want to be first in line
incomprehensibility in me -
which means there are only a few famous people
everyone's agreed on, and they're anonymous -
the man who discovered the fermentation process,
and the shaman with ***** who sifted through amazonian
poisons to find a hallucinogenic,
to name but a few of the truly famous ancients.
in conclusion - had bukowski been taught german,
or had been old enough to remember some german,
his writing might have looked something like this;
i too with acne, chernobyl birthmark,
heart condition, and a forcefully induced
****** scheme sophistication brain haemorrhage,
resulting in wrong diagnosis of schizophrenia,
fuelling my subsequent splashing money on
psychiatry books and beating about 5 psychiatrists
at their own game: given my stature of 6ft2
and 253pounds... they were worried i might do
something grotesque - hard to get a discharge,
but got one after 7 years of wrong treatment;
that's like prison, worse, you are living in a society
that tries to pacify you, seeing all the pleasures
of society with people enjoying them, dangling like
a treat, and you're told you're "sick."
i'd rather have spent 7 years with those deservedly
locked up: at least a feeling of solidarity for god's sake:
so as you can imagine, my investment in an internet
presence or the internet's appreciation of it
is about as important to me as yesteryear's snowfall.

A lowly wooden bench lent itself to a lonesome aged narrow man in a common garden in the smallest hour of the day’s beginning. In the thick haze of the summer’s waking light the common is thinly met with the company of others. Just an old man and his acquainted bench who came to give his eyes sight to the grass and trees, and to rid himself of thought.
He and the bench creak as he sits back; clutching at the satchel veiled among his dull drudged garb that bleeds into his pallid slack and cracked skin.
The wiry hairs bushed around his nostrils recoil to the deep inhale before the sigh, his yawning blue eyes sliding behind a milky glaze follow a bushy tailed rodent hurry into the confidence of a tree.
Through all nonchalance a pair of hobgoblin lugs under a brown woollen hat slides up the flanks of his head to outlying drowned tones of laddish laughs and lewd levity, an unseen clutch of kids filling the common’s spread with their foolish louting prances. Intimidating the preferred and performed with their innocuous idiocies; a mere asocial array of follies without the thought of good manner.
The thoughts of the old man are only briefly drawn; his ears leave the sounds of reckless recreation and back to the hushing song of the swaying grass, the rustling shake of the seasoned leaves on gorged and drooping branches. To his own wilted waning heart, the tremors, quiver and shivers within his own cage, his thoughts turned to his own temporal passage and to the re-joining of his love, of whom no longer lays her head on his shoulder, whom no longer wraps herself around his arm on the lowly park bench.
His lowest lip gives to an emotive tremble as he heaves himself over to the hem of the seat, his hands without any other part to play; frenetically tickle one another with frail kinked fingers.
With what little his body has left to give the eyes well to the upmost point of a tear, as he feels the weight of his wallet in his side trouser pocket against the rough of his skin. Where there within lays an image of a most loved face in a prized time, so that it may be remembered so it may fetch ease to a remittent floundering morsel of a man who could justly with the dead.
The photograph within his keeping need not be looked upon from under the shine of a laminated holding; it needs only to be there, only to be known that it is there.
The satchel was undid and fetched from within the clutter came an elderly notebook now held in his hands. A phlegmy husk of something said breeches his gummy chops, and he spits as he spat shouting out at the still of the garden.
“You should always write more than you do,” she would say, “you are better for it when you do and it lifts me as it does you, when you do.”
The old man reads from the notebook with a weak hate for the world.

“Am I for the worms yet? Am I to be from this rock?
Am I not yet too mad for this mad maddening world?
Four corners of an empty house, a homeless place of curling wallpaper and aloneness for company.
A room in a vagrant house with no light to fill it with a decrepit fool for a keeper
His stink stinks the walls for days as the blow flies form a speckled haze as they feast in filth of his unnoticed demise
With no manner of intention and for relation or friend, there is no cause and no mention for any to attend
He will rot with the house and his memory with it, with his memory does his love die and together they are ghosts in a world where ghosts do not exist.”

The old man pauses as he forcibly triggers one finger to his temple and ***** in his lips. His empty cries fall to a mumble as his hands tremble with his dear notebook in their grasp.

“Take me now cruel are the fates, take me now and rid me
The worms will welcome me, my flesh for an endless night
My life for a world without this life, for a life without his world
I would hold with a brim smile if it was not for my memory of her, if she was not to be lost at the close of this stint
I know not or want knowledge; I seek not of a design and not of meaning
Just a cure for this affliction for my must to her who brings me so much sorrow
Through blissful ages I can no longer hold, and can barely recall
We are all just people who will soon be once living, to be unlived and to forget is a conflict in myself
I have no answer as I have no question, you can have no answer to a question you do not seek nor ask
I dare not speak but I have no end for this, I have no solace and I have no end.”
The old man; the poor old man began to close his dear aged notebook and find the need to bring a smile, perhaps a moment of lunacy to calm the tightening knot beneath his breast.
He pulled a scratching cackle from the pit, wild and uncooked wiping the drool from the crook of his maw with the back of his blotched, mottled hand.
The old man found some seconds of a stoic amenity as his wild eyes grew gallant for those mere moments before the grey metal heft of his sullen vesture fell to his shoulders, he became heavy once more as the world retook him and cloaked again in the present - the light ebbed from him as swiftly as it came. The old man reproached his satchel to humbly return his dear old notebook.
There was a crack like a pick to ice with a hollow thud like a boot to wood as an immediately dissipating claret mist fizzed above his head. The make shift found-about cosh still swinging through the air and over his crown, the old man’s wilted body twisted and slumped to the floor face first. The concrete path before him tearing at the skin of his chin, his frail bones cracked as the meagre weight of his body forced itself into his neck. Laying perverse and unnatural the life was soaked up into his woollen hat and out across the concrete, to the grass – to the worms that writhed below the muck. His eyes were as lifeless as they were when he lived.
They did not wait for the gentle hiss of the spray or the bubbles that popped in the pool that surrounded the old man. They had snatched the satchel and ran off into the spread of the common until they were nothing but outlying drowned tones of laddish laughs and lewd levity.
Crazy old *******.
A lowly wooden bench has lent itself to a lonesome aged narrow man in a common garden in the smallest hour of the day’s beginning. In the thick haze of the summer’s waking light the common is thinly met with the company of others. Just an old man and his acquainted bench who came to give his eyes sight to the grass and trees, and to rid himself of thought.

I exposed all of myself to you.
You undressed me,
Took down all my barriers
And stole my heart.
While she slowly retook yours.
I fell deeper into your arms,
You slowly lowering me to the ground.
Now just another item in the 'Lost and Found'.
While my pillow still smells of you,
The lining of my stomach is still sick
with the thought of you.
Of you both.
You had me as a fool.
Stupidly in love with the crazy idea
That it was all for me.
Like a game of 'Kiss Chase'
You were perusing me, I, playing along.
You caught me,
Kissed me
Then left me.
Another player in the game.
Her legs just a little faster than mine.
Me now out of the game,
I sit back and watch you
Try and win her heart once more.

The coach signaled timeout and called the team to the sidelines.  There were eight minutes left in the biggest game of their lives, and they would be playing for three minutes with a severe disadvantage.  They had committed a succession of penalties within a span of less than 60 seconds, and they would now be playing without three men on the field.  In lacrosse this is referred to as ‘Man Down.’  

Usually it’s only ‘One Man Down,’ or at the most, ‘Two Men Down,’ but few watching that day had ever seen a team go ‘Three Men Down.’  This meant that their star goalie T.J. Braxton was only going to have three defenders in front of him instead of the usual six.

T.J. had been playing great, but he now had to play for two minutes with three men missing in front of him and then the third minute still missing one. It was going to seem like an eternity.  The coach looked over at T.J. and he was standing off to the side by himself not wanting to either look or talk to anyone during the intermission.  The coach understood this behavior because he had been a goalie himself and decided to leave T.J. alone — totally immersed within his own thoughts.

As they did the cheer to break the huddle, it was for their goalie …”1, 2, 3, Go T.J.”  What would happen now brought more pressure than any goalie should ever have to withstand.  Even going just ‘One Man Down’ would in many cases result in a goal for the other team.  Going ‘Two Men Down’ almost ensures the other team a goal, and anything beyond that just puts your goalie at the mercy of the shooters on the other team.

    And Tonight There Would Be No Mercy To Be Found

T.J. already had 18 saves up to this point with only half a quarter left to play in regulation. Saves are when a goalie either blocks or deflects an offensive shot from the other team. He had only let in three goals all game, and the score was tied at 3-3.  

Pennhurst was a powerful public school with large and fast athletes.  They had not been playing lacrosse as long as T.J.’s private (all-boys) school, Haverland Academy, but their natural athletic ability and inner toughness were making up for any experience lost.  

T.J. would have to defend his goal missing three men in front of him for two minutes and then missing one man for the next sixty seconds.  It was his team’s possession coming out of the timeout, and it was all they could do being so shorthanded to even get the ball across the mid-field line.  The coach’s tactic was not to shoot the ball now but to stall and to try and take as much time off the clock as they could until they could get more players back on the field.  T.J. stood rock solid in the center of the ‘crease’ in front of his goal and looked squarely at the goalie at the other end of the field. The ‘crease’ was the large circle surrounding the goal that no offensive player from the other team could enter. He seemed to not be following the ball and his coach wondered what was going on inside his head.

Playing goalie is 80% mental, and he was hoping his star goalie wasn’t going to have a melt down when his team needed him the most.  T.J. would normally be very active inside his own goal shouting instructions to the defensemen in front of him and trying to best position them for the oncoming attack.    

               Something ‘Seemed’ Different Tonight

T.J. had entered a new zone, one that he had never been in before, and one that only he could understand.  As Haverland’s lead attackman charged the opposing goal, the ball fell out of his stick. It was immediately picked up by the opposing goalie and ‘cleared’ to a midfielder standing outside and to his left.  The midfielder made one more pass to an attackman, and the ball was coming T.J.’s way with only three defenders in front of him to help stop the charge. The ball was again passed to one of their senior captains and their strongest midfielder.  

He juked left as he faked a pass and then as he cradled the ball wildly, he headed straight toward T.J. in the goal.  When he got within fifteen feet of the goal he stopped, set his feet, and with a violent and twisting motion fired an overhand shot across his right shoulder at the ground two feet in front of where T.J. now stood.

T.J. was now eighteen and a half and had been playing goalie since he was seven years old.  He had seen and defended almost every kind of shot and from every angle in those eleven years. He had just never had to do it before with almost no defense in front of him.  As the shot left the midfielders stick, T.J. reacted.  He took two steps forward and was able to scoop the ball out of the air at ankle height before it was able to bounce off the ground. Bounce shots were more difficult to save, and his accumulated instinct and experience allowed him to get this one and at least for now keep the score tied at 3-3.

T.J. ran behind his own goal toward the end line. With the ball in his stick he was trying to take time off the clock.  Only one opposing player chased him, and he was able to do a 180-degree spin, avoid that player, and run back out in front of his goal.  He then cleared the ball, the entire length of the field, to a midfielder standing in the far left corner.  T.J.’s team had the ball within thirty feet of the opposing goal with only two minutes left to run in penalty time.

T.J.’s offense decided it was time to step up and play big.  They managed to take a full minute off the clock with uncanny passing until the referee finally called stalling and gave the ball back to the other side.

As the ball came back in T.J’s direction, two of his penalized players retook the field.  They were now playing with only a ‘one man down’ disadvantage and for only sixty more seconds.

The opposing team set up in a perimeter in front of his goal passing the ball from man to man and then behind T.J.’s goal in an attempt to unbalance a still weakened defense.  As the ball went behind the net, T.J. rotated inside the crease never taking his eye off the ball.  He thought they were setting him up for something sneaky because his fundamental blocking skills on normal shots were so strong. More than anything he didn’t want to give up a cheap goal, and he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out that his suspicions had been correct.

As they passed the ball back and forth behind his goal, an attackman turned and tried to lob the ball over the back of the goal, and T.J.’s stick, to an opposing midfielder who was charging the front of the goal from about twenty-five-feet away.  They were hoping to catch T.J. mesmerized in what was going on behind the net and then reverse field and go in the one direction no one ever expected — over the back of the goal.  

It didn’t work!  As the ball left the midfielders stick, T.J. jumped high in the air and intercepted the pass in the shooting strings of his goalie stick.  He then spun around and ran directly to the out of bounds line to his right. It was beyond the defensive box, and he stood there waiting for someone to challenge him.  He was again trying to take precious seconds off the clock to get his team back to full strength. Although a goalie, T.J. was the fastest player on his team and that speed was like money in the bank to a team that was struggling and in trouble with time running out.

He managed to get the penalty down to twenty two seconds before he finally dished the ball off to another long stick defender and then quickly moved back in front of his goal.  That defensemen got across midfield just before another penalty would have occurred for not advancing the ball.  With only seventeen seconds left on the penalty, the offense passed the ball to the four corners looking for a man who was ‘hot’ (open) who could take the shot and finally break the tie.  With only three seconds left in the penalty their best attackman, John Erasmus, took the ball in his stick and with his left hand fired a side angle shot at the right side of the goal.  It was a great shot, but their goalie made a heroic save. He was also a senior and had transferred into Pennhurst two years ago from a Lacrosse powerhouse school in northern Maryland.

With both teams now at full strength, the ball went back and forth for the final five minutes with very few shots taken at either end.  The ones that were taken were weak and from great distance, and both goalies easily picked them up and started the ball going the other way.  Each shot was critical now because the game was tied with time running out.  Possession was more important than losing the ball to the other team by taking a poor shot.  As the lights shone brightly high above the scoreboard, time ran out in regulation.  The game would now go to sudden death overtime, and it would become about the strength of the face-off men and how hot each goalie was going to be.

    It Was Now About The Face-Off Man And The Goalies

In sudden death, the first team to score wins!  No second chances here it’s do or die time, and everything is amped up to an entirely new level.  Many times, the winner of the face off at midfield wins the game because everything is geared towards that one shot, and the pressure on the opposing goalie is tremendous.  Unless the goalie can isolate himself in a ‘zone of invincibility,’ the chances of blocking a shot in overtime due to a lost face off are not very good.  Just like in the NFL, where the coin toss often determines the winner in overtime, the face-off is like that coin toss only with skill and not luck determining the winner.  T.J. thought back to all the coaches and mentors that had brought him to where he was standing tonight.  They were all somewhere up in the stands, and they were all living and dying with him tonight in the goal.

      T.J. Decided That Tonight It Would Be About Life

The Captains met at the middle of the field as the referee explained the rules of sudden death.  All who were listening thought that the term was aptly named.  They shook hands again and ran back to the huddles on their respective sidelines.  Both coaches gave their overtime strategies to their teams, and they did one more cheer before retaking the field.  Both face off men walked slowly toward each other at the center mid-field line and stared each other directly in the eye.  

The physical disparity between the two players at mid-field was huge.  Haverland’s best face off man, George Arle, was 5’6’’ tall and 160 lbs. Pennhurst’s face off man, B.J. Radford, had been an All-State quarterback on the football team and was 6’3’’ and 225 lbs.  Although Lacrosse was not his primary sport,  he had played it for the last four years and by anyone’s account he was a ‘stud player.’  The skill in taking face offs is unlike any other in Lacrosse.  It’s more similar to recovering a fumble in football or picking up a loose five-dollar bill dropped on the floor in Penn Station in New York.  It’s uncontrolled mayhem with the skill to do it only evident to those who have been there. And it’s those players who know painfully well what it takes to win the fight for the ball.

Although T.J.’s face off man George had had a good season, he always struggled against players that were that much bigger than him and usually lost the ball.  The ref. positioned the ball between the two boys sticks who were both crouched down and ready at mid-field.  The whistle blew, and George lost the ball as B.J. picked it up and charged right over George’s left shoulder.  He was headed in a straight line right toward T.J. who was standing fixed and ready in front of his goal.  B.J. passed the ball to a midfielder who kept it only a second before passing it to an attackman who was off to the right of the goal.  The attackman looked to his left and faked a pass to his right.  He then spun around and with all his might fired a bounce shot on an angle from the right facing side of Haverland’s goal.  

T.J. stepped forward, scooped the ball up on the first bounce, and in one fluid motion flipped the ball out to a defenseman on the left perimeter. This player cradled it inside his long stick as he took off down the sideline and across midfield.  The defenseman made a pass to a middie on the extreme other side of the field who then passed to an attackman. This man ran around behind the net and came out on the other side in front of the goal, shot the ball, but it went wide right.  The other team was closest to the ball when it went out of bounds, so it was Pennhurst’s possession, and it was coming back T.J.’s way.

Their goalie cleared the ball left to a long stick defenseman, who in turn made a long pass directly to an attackman, and the ball was once again in the oppositions stick less than thirty feet from the goal T.J. was defending.  This attackman had no intention of passing.  He put his head down and charged straight ahead toward T.J.  As his coach was screaming at him to pass, and it the midst of five defensive players, he fired off a shot.  It came at a side angle, and, with all of the players surrounding the shooter, it was hard for T.J. to see the ball come off the kid’s stick.  

When T.J. finally did see the ball, it had passed the head of his stick, and he was just able to get a piece of the ball with the bottom of his shaft. It was just enough to deflect the ball upwards and over the goal and into the chain link fence fifty feet behind the crease.  On instinct alone, T.J. ran after the ball and being closest to it when it went out of bounds, he picked it up in his stick and slowly walked forward. This gave his midfielders time to transition back up to the other end of the field.

T.J. was living on borrowed time.  Making one save in overtime was huge, but making two, and one with only the shaft of his stick to save it all, was stretching the limits of whatever luck the team had left.  T.J. easily passed the ball to an unguarded defenseman who ‘walked’ the ball up-field and then tossed it to a midfielder just in front of the offensive box.  

The offensive box is the restrained and shorter ‘boxed-out’ area right in front of the goalie and where most shots are taken, and most goals are scored. The midfielder made a pass to his left to an attackman, who tried to make a long looping pass across the face of the box, but it was intercepted by one of the oppositions long stick middies and passed quickly to another midfielder as it transitioned back again towards T.J. This time the ball was coming straight at T.J., and it had taken less than five seconds to get there.  His team was not set yet and this charge could be the end of it all.

T.J.’s team had been caught napping in an uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty.  Pennhurst’s top midfielder again had the ball, and he was charging at T.J. who had only two players set and not the normal six in front of him to play defense.

Surprisingly to T.J., this player then made a pass to the extreme right corner and that attackman ran behind T.J.’s goal giving his defense more time to reset.  This player then made a pass to the left side, and it was once again in the stick of their best midfielder, Matt Makritis.  Midfielders, or Middies, as they’re often called are many times the best athletes on the team.  They have to play both offense and defense and run the entire length of the field while their shift is on. Makritis was a high school All-American, and he was charging at full speed toward the left front facing side of T.J.’s goal.

                       T.J. Was An All-American Too!

T.J. was also an All-American and had recently been on the front cover of ‘Inside Lacrosse Magazine’ and featured as the #1 player coming out of High School Lacrosse that year.  He thought to himself that all of that press would be meaningless if he allowed this shot to go in.  The opposing midfielder continued toward the crease unguarded, got within ten feet of the goal, and fired point blank at T.J.  No fancy bounce shots or behind the back this time.  This shot was straight at T.J.’s head, and from less than ten feet away. T.J. caught the ball in the fat part of his goalie sticks net.  It didn’t stay there though.  The power of the shot caused it to come out of his stick, in what is referred to as a rebound, as it rolled ten or twelve feet out in front of the goal.

A second midfielder then picked up the ball, and not lifting it from the ground, fired a shot right back at T.J. This was more like a golf shot than a lacrosse shot, and T.J. struggled to see from which direction the ball was coming.  As the ball came back at T.J. at a severe angle, headed toward the left backside of the net, he stretched his body out like a goalie in the NHL.  Doing a full split in front of the net, he was able to get a piece of the ball with his right cleat and deflect the ball off to the left side of the goal. As the ball rolled harmlessly toward the far side of the endline, the referee blew his whistle.  The first three-minute overtime period had ended.

    They Had Survived Sudden Death For Three Minutes

Both teams huddled tightly with their coaches and trainers.  This time though, T.J. didn’t leave the crease at all.  He was leaning against the goal with his back turned to the field. It was almost as if he was talking to someone you couldn’t see and totally immersed in a world of his own.  There are several times in a man’s life that define and underline not only who he is, but who he will then become.  This was one of those times for T.J.

                                 And He Knew It

Both teams wearily took the field.  The pressure of an extremely tight game, and then surviving one overtime period, had taken its toll.  As the face-off men bent low and readied for the ball, T.J.’s back was still facing the field.  When he heard the whistle blow he spun around and it was like someone twice his 6’2’’ size was playing goalie.  He seemed to fill the entire net with his presence and there was an ‘aura’ coming from him that surrounded the entire defensive end of the field.

Once again, George lost the face off to the All-State quarterback and star midfielder, B.J. Radford.  This time however, the look on B.J.’s face was different.  Although fairly new to Lacrosse, inside his chest beat the heart of a champion.  He almost stepped on George as he picked up the ball and headed straight over the mid-field line and directly at T.J.  This senior captain had no intention of passing, and he was going to ‘ice’ the game for his teammates and fans.  B.J. was not known as a great shooter but more for his defensive skills. He was a great athlete though, and this charge was not to be taken lightly by anyone on the defensive end of the field.  

                 B.J. Knew This Was His Moment

Without stopping or setting his feet, he raised his stick above his head and shot the ball toward the right corner of the net at over ninety miles an hour.  T.J. saw this one all the way and caught the ball in his stick.  He then ran out of the goal and passed B.J. who was still coming his way as he charged past him and headed straight down the field.  T.J. was out of the defensive box and headed toward the mid-field line.  He was looking at nothing in front of him except the opposing goalie who was now staring at him with an incredulous look on his face inside the opposing crease.

Everyone there that night had their mouth’s open in awe.  No one expected the goalie to ever make the final break, and no one watching had ever seen a goalie possessed with such speed.  The other team was in awe too and just kept watching him run. They were all guarding open men who they were sure T.J. would eventually pass the ball to.

                                  He Didn’t Pass

When he crossed the midfield line, the fans went wild and stood up.  One of his midfielders had the presence of mind to stay back behind the midfield line so that an offsides wouldn’t be called.  In Lacrosse, you always need at least three men back plus the goalie in the defensive end.  Once T.J. crossed midfield, one of the midfielders had to stay back.

T.J. approached the offensive box in front of their goalie with only one thing on his mind.  He had been acutely watching this kid all day and he had noticed one thing.  This was a fundamentally sound and ‘play up’ goalie and one would who would rise to the occasion when the heat was on.  He had transferred into Pennhurst only two years ago and based on his great skill, he had gotten them this far.  He had one weakness though that T.J. had observed — he couldn’t handle the off-speed shots, especially over his left shoulder.

The left shoulder is opposite the goalie stick’s head if you’re right handed. In his case, the only weakness that T.J. had seen,
other than his struggle with off-speed shots, were those directed high up and left.  Like a changeup in baseball, the off-speed shot often confused the goalie’s timing and could cause him to over or under react at just the right time.  T.J. continued to charge the goal.

By this time, two defensemen from Pennhurst were running from both sides to get to T.J. before he could shoot, but his speed was too much.  As he approached the crease from the right side, he raised his stick above his head.  He threw his lower right elbow at the goalie as if executing a shot.  His stick-head never moved, but the goalie bit on the fake.  He waved the head of his stick high right and then easily lobbed the ball over the Pennhurst goalie’s left shoulder.  The referee blew the whistle — the game was over —and T.J.’s team had finally won.

The other goalie dropped to his knees and then put both hands on the ground in front of him.  T.J. went over and picked him up saying: “You may have lost on the scoreboard tonight, but you never gave up. I’m proud to have played against you.”

Haverland had just won the State Championship, and most watching said it was the greatest goalie performance at any level that they had ever seen.  T.J. was voted ‘Most Valuable Player’ of the game. In the fall, he would be off to a top 10 Lacrosse University where he would major in Criminal Justice and take his goalie skills to an even higher level.

T.J.’s coach told him after the game that you can play lacrosse for your entire lifetime and never be able to play or recreate what you just did.  His future college coach, who had been in the stands watching, came down on the field and put his arm around T.J. after the game and told him the same thing.  He went on to say: “T.J., I had my whole speech ready before you went into overtime.  I thought I might have to come down here and tell you that although you lost — you lost really well.

   T.J. Did Not Want To Believe That Losing Well Was Really Possible!

“You had made all those heroic saves throughout the game for your team, and if you had to lose, it would have been a great way to do it.  The only problem with my prepared speech is that you didn’t lose. As I watched you in the goal with your back turned to the field as the second overtime period started, I said to my assistant coach Dave, who’s over talking to your folks, that our new and future goalie is in a zone that few can ever get to.  He will not be scored on again tonight.  Tonight, and for however long this game lasts — he is truly invincible. And I don’t believe I’ve ever used that word to describe a player before.”

Many years passed and one day T.J got an email from his old high school coach.  The coach told him that once again his school, Haverland, would be playing for the State Championship and he wanted to run his pre-game speech by T.J. before his boys took the field.  It was short and to the point.  What he wanted to tell the boys was: “It wouldn’t be the number of players on the field but who those players were and what was coming from inside their hearts that would make all the difference.”  He then went on to tell the story of T.J. in the State Championship Game that took place over ten years before.  

Some of the boys had heard the story, but all were in awe listening to the emotion and passion in their coach’s voice as he retold the story again.  It was like replaying that game with the current Haverland players and right before the most important game that most of them would ever play.  

Haverland won the State Championship again that day and many of the boys said that it was the pre-game speech about T.J. and his team’s overtime victory that fueled their desire and commitment to make it happen.  It was also a close game, and with two minutes to go the score was again tied. Five times during the game they had gone ‘one-man’ down but had only allowed one goal to be scored during those five uneven possessions by the other team.  Haverland was then able to strip the ball from their opponent twice in the final two minutes and convert both into scores — ending the game at 7-5.

Along a lonely hallway in the back of Haverland’s new athletic center hangs a plaque with the story of that night so many years ago.  But to T.J., and all the members of that legendary team, the thing that hangs highest — is their refusal to lose.

The possibility of being invincible would stay inside T.J. and all who were there to watch him play that night. He learned that at the end of the streak where luck ends, sometimes you have to enter that zone …

                                 And Just ‘Will It’ To Happen.