When: October 19, 2024
Where: Devens, MA

Event Summary
The girls’ lacrosse club season kicked off with New England’s top fall championship tournament, The New England Chill.

What a weekend to kick off REV22, the 22nd year of Revolution Lacrosse, at REVlax’s own event, The New England Chill.  The weather was perfect, the sun was out, foliage was at peak, the DJ tent was bumping, and the dance offs were legit!

Traditionally, The New England Chill is REVlax’s 2nd tournament of the fall, but with the Westside Tournament canceling this year, this was opening weekend!   Nine REVlax teams had winning records with three teams going undefeated and TWO teams winning the Championships!

Congratulations to the REV25 Team for winning the Championship and putting in a whooping 55 goals while only giving up nine goals on the day!

Congratulations also to the REV26 Black team for winning their Championship after battling a very strong Yellow Jackets team!
Though both undefeated, 27Black and 31Heart each missed the playoffs to the other undefeated team in their respective pools seeing they had one more allowed goal! What are the odds!?!
Something fun that the REVlax players loved was that after each game, a REVlaxer  was awarded the Game Pumpkin for outstanding play by the team and coaching staff.  And at the end of each day, the All-Tournament Pumpkin was awarded!

Team Summary
As our high school teams know, we have two objectives for the High School Program. The first being to prepare our players for their varsity tryouts as a freshman and then September 1st of their junior year, in that they are ready for their recruiting process to begin.  This long-term development path gives both the REVlax Staff and players the opportunity to solely focus on development.  As such, we spend the formative years of the high school program  (8th grade to the start of freshman spring) working on such concepts of doing your job, seize your moments, run full speed and fight the quit, all the while, helping our players how to learn to play a run and gun style of offence and of course, the importance of stick development. Today, for both groups we kicked off this preparation at The New England CHILL. And it was awesome to be out there with the future leaders of the club!

29Black Record: 1-2 

The forged by fire process has begun for the 29Black Team.  As we shared, this team is very similar to our 24Black Team who also went through the fire for two years.  Back in 8th grade, our REV 24Black looked very much like our 29Black group today. Similar to what this team has been hearing us say, we said to the 24Black Team years ago.   The 24Black Team spent two years in the fire and by sophomore year started to look like a well-oiled machine and then Junior year they went 18-0.  Their stats are astonishing with two Players of Year nods, 10+ All Americans, 17 All League Players and 12 Captains.    And so today, the 29Black team is on a similar road as we focus on running full speed, winning the moment and staying in the fight. The 29Black players are buying into the idea that this is a process, one that will take years as we focus on variables that take time to develop, enabling our players to be prepared for varsity tryouts as a freshman!

Something super cool today was the introduction to the team on understanding metrics. There are three metrics that determine game outcomes:
1) draws
2) unforced turnovers
3) shot percentage

The first game of the season started off on the other side of the metrics.  At half, the team score was 0-8.  A typical outcome for when mistakes occur with too many unforced turnovers.  After regrouping at half time, the 2nd half score was 4-5! It was a completely different game. The team did awesome in increasing draw production, increasing the shooting percentage, decreasing the unforced turnovers and it showed!  For the individual watching, most of the time all one sees is the collapse of a game.  From our vantage position, we witnessed a team getting a hold of itself by individuals focusing on and committing to their jobs and the results showed. This is VERY hard to do and requires a mindset of staying in the fighting which we have been working on since the summer.

The second game, wouldn’t you know it, the same thing happened.  The first half slipped away and then in the second half our team regrouped and executed.  The third game of the day is when the team put two halves together and played!  That third game is the foundation of the future, and we could not be more excited!

Shout outs/Pumpkin Winners
#73 Kate O’Connor – Defender 
The gains that Kate has made in a year have been amazing!  Kate DIALED IN this year and dramatically improved her stick and switched from attack to defense in the summer.  As she has continued her development, she is now one of the team’s top 1on1 defenders with amazing clearing abilities. Given her stick development and efforts, today Kate rocked it on D and also did exceedingly well playing midfield for her team.  Her efforts and performance garnered her the Game Pumpkin!  It’s  been an amazing ride watching you, Kate!  Keep it up!

#23 Emma Voute – Middie 
The soccer player converted to standout lacrosse player ran the midfield HARD!  Voute played awesome defense, winning the 50/50 ground balls, attacking the net and when her team was slipping, Voute remained consistent and kept doing her job!  Kudos to you Voute for a great day and winning the Game Pumkin! #ConsistencyisKey

#31 Cordelia Song – Every Position! 
The quintessential REVlaxer, Song has been playing attack and today took shifts on defense where she played awesome.  We just might have a defender convert on our hands!  Song’s efforts on developing her stick on the REVlax Wall Ball Program shows given her smooth stick.  A scrappy player who fights for the 50/50 ground balls, we put Song on defense to see what she could do and let’s just say, she slid with intention and purpose and at times looked like she has been working with our defensive group for years.  Song, your efforts turned heads at The CHILL! Keep working hard and win your moments! Congratulations!

All Tournament Pumpkin 
#1 Paige Mahon – Goalie
Being a REVlax goalie is hard!  We expect a lot of our goalies in that they should make the saves they should, some they shouldn’t, be a team leader of groundballs and make great clears.  The expectations are high, and this is one of the reasons why REVlax is nationally known for producing top goalies.  Paige received the honor of the All-Tournament Pumpkin from her teammates for her poise in the net and focus in making the save, even when her defense broke down.  Congratulations Paige, it has been something special to witness your growth in just this last year alone!