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Carlisle
Hubert Gilroy
723 W. Penn Street
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
17013
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 News: Lutz, Blashford to Ohio St. |
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Thursday, March 6
Lutz, Blashford to Ohio St.
By Toni Fitzgerald November 17, 2002
The college recruiting business is tough enough without any added distractions. But that's just what John Blashford and Jason Lutz, the two best lacrosse players in Carlisle school history, got.
Somewhere between last year's state quarterfinals loss and the summer, when Blashford and Lutz began filling out their recruiting applications, the Herd's stat book disappeared.
That made it a little difficult to fill in those blanks that say "Number of goals last season" or "Number of career assists."
"I just left them blank," Blashford confesses. "It's kinda funny. I called one of our assistant coaches (to ask about stats), and he said another assistant had it (the stat book), and he said the managers have it. I talked to the managers and they said the head coach had it. I talked to coach, and he said he gave it to an assistant.
"But that's all right."
It is. It helps when the guy offering the scholarship is your high school coach's brother, and so can hear first-hand about your exploits instead of just looking at a stat sheet. So when Blashford and Lutz's recruiting forms, sans some of that info, landed on Ohio State coach Joe Breschi's desk, he was already familiar with the names.
His brother, Dave Breschi, coaches the Thundering Herd. Thursday Lutz and Blashford became the first players in Carlisle lacrosse history to sign for a Division I program when they committed to OSU.
They're two of the first in all of central Pennsylvania, in fact, in a region where lax isn't the draw that it has been for years in Maryland, Virginia and the Philadelphia area.
That didn't stop Lutz, a 6-foot-4 220-pound all-state selection, from getting looks from two of the best programs in the country, the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins. Lutz says they, too, offered him a 50 percent scholarship, but he ultimately decided to sign with Ohio State.
"Just, when I visited (UVa and Johns Hopkins), I, uh, didn't fit," he explains. "I always kinda dreamed of playing for them because they're so good, but after I visited, I saw they weren't for me.
"I didn't like the coaches that much and they weren't my kind of kids."
Instead he and Blashford, who will receive a partial scholarship a little less than Lutz's 50 percent, will join an OSU team that finished 9-5 last season, 3-2 in the Great Western Lacrosse League. The GWLL, which also includes Notre Dame, Air Force, Denver, Butler and Fairfield, doesn't have much star wattage, but it does have an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament.
Joe Breschi, a former North Carolina star, has coached the Buckeyes for five seasons and won the GWLL title in 1999.
Although the OSU program has been around for 45 years, it has just seven 10-win seasons. Breschi has one of them. Stronger recruiting last year and this have Lutz and Blashford optimistic about the future.
"It's one that's up and coming," says Lutz, who will major in engineering. "They're building in the next few years, and I think they're going to be really good."
"He's just so excited about the game," Blashford says of Joe Breschi. "He makes you excited, too. He doesn't have to yell and scream at you to get you to do it right. You want to do it."
Though they signed together, they made their decisions separately. Lutz knew since his sophomore year that he wanted to play DI. Both players attended numerous summer camps to launch themselves on the national radar. Because central Pennsylvania hasn't had many DI players, there's no reputation to build on. But Lutz, with his size and skill, started generating buzz even before being named to the all-state team last season.
Blashford, who scored 40 goals last season, got looks from DI programs Navy and Colgate, too. His decision ultimately came down to whether he wanted to be a two- or one-sport player in college.
"I also play soccer, so I had to consider that, especially when I was deciding whether I wanted to play DI and focus on one (sport), or maybe go to a smaller place and play two sports," Blashford says. "But I just felt more comfortable on the lacrosse field."
Carlisle in general has been feeling that way. When Blashford and Lutz began, the Herd didn't have a middle school program. Both experienced their first games as eighth graders, when the then-club program allowed them to play JV.
Lax has since become a varsity pursuit at Carlisle, which boasts a new middle school program. The Herd won its third league championship last season and picked up its first-ever state playoff victory. Dave Breschi earned state coach of the year honors, and a handful of players from last year went on to Division II and III schools.
Now Carlisle has its first batch of DI-ers, and Lutz and Blashford are happy to set the pace. It never hurts to have an in with a big-time program, but they wouldn't have gotten the money if they weren't worth it. Lutz hopes that DI coaches will start attending District 3 games with a little more frequency in the future, stat books or no.
"It does feel good, you're kinda paving the way for the rest of the kids," Lutz says. "Hopefully coaches will come to start looking at other games."
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