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Heard Round the World

Colt

Major League Lacrosse Playoffs, October 2024

‘ W E GET IT DONE, YOU HEAR ME? WE GET THIS DONE, IT’S FINALS, BABY!’

Arms linked to form a huddle, my teammates reply by way of whoops and shouts. I feel a hand clutch my stick and give it a good shake, and another tap the back of my helmet. The energy is electric, and we’re all at the point of the night where we’re just itching to hit the turf. Heavy bass pours through the speakers mounted all around Mill River Stadium, but I hear nothing but the guys’ roars.

‘WE GET THIS DONE, WE INVADE NATE’S!’ adds Drew, earning excited yelps at the mention of the New Haven Woodchucks’ unofficial team bar.

‘WE GET THIS DONE, I MOVE OUT OF MOM’S!’

I’d groan and grumble at that one from Connor, but we’re too hyped up on adrenaline to make a joke about Connor’s home in his mother’s basement. We’re also too broke to make a joke about it, for the record. No one ever warns you that all pro athletes are made very, very unequal.

‘GOOD FOR YOUR MOM!’ JJ beats me to the punch.

Chaotic laughter and jersey-tugging ensue, at least till I get the boys back on track.

‘Listen, guys.’

Their voices fall, the huddle tightening when they hear the dead serious undertone. We’ve never been a serious team. In fact, we’re the most unserious in the league. We’re also the youngest, on average. But when it comes to it, as captain, I refuse to drop the ball if our season depends on it. We’ll switch up when we need to.

‘We’ve had shit seasons before.’ Nods and grumbles of acknowledgement all around. ‘Maybe I only saw one of ’em. But I saw enough this year to know that no matter what people have to say, no matter how many times they tell us we’re too young, too hopeful, this team has proven them wrong. This team was made for the championship.’

Team dad Rodney ‘Rod’ Wilson is the stern voice that joins mine in encouragement; nothing new from my best friend on the East Coast. ‘Picture us with that trophy. Out there under the lights with the hardware. Top of the league. Top of the damn sport .’

Rod gives me a nudge. Keep it going . I nod, picking up his energy. ‘We are four games away , boys. Four. Three, after this, and we’ll be on top of the world. Does “national champion” sound fuckin’ good enough?’

Gloved hands slap padded shoulders, as every single one of us howls in agreement. We’ve always been close – you have to, to play a sport that involves so much trust – but we’re never closer than we are right before a match. Especially the most important one we’ve played to date.

‘ALRIGHT, brING IT ON! ONE, TWO, THREE, brEAK!’

We scatter and jog onto the field on autopilot as we take positions, cleats crunching in the grass. I can’t help looking up at the stands. It’s a bigger crowd than we’re used to pulling in, the usual New Haven Woodchucks lacrosse fanatics sitting front row, but new faces packing the upper bleachers in anticipation of tonight’s underdog event. I tug at the strap of my helmet, relish the bit of peace we get before the game starts and all hell breaks loose for four quarters of chaos and stress.

Way more so than usual, Mill River Stadium is all Woodchucks today, fans toting banners and posters for our first playoff ever as a Major League Lacrosse team. Granted, we’re as young as the league – only about ten years old – but history is history. If we can break this playoff game, we can prove we’ve got a good shot at it all: the championship title.

JJ smacks me in the back with the butt of his stick as I start my trek towards the centre of the field, wrinkling my crisp blue jersey. Technically, I can’t see him, because he’s behind me the entire time, but the insufferable snicker that follows the blow tells me everything I need to know about my attacker.

‘Chucks’ve never gotten this far. Get it done,’ he hums, quoting my words and wagging his stick off to my left.

‘Yeah, yeah.’ With a roll of my eyes and a chuckle, I take my midfield position just behind the site of the face-off, marked by a midline and a circle at its direct centre. The ball is placed on an X in the middle of the circle, at which the face-off specialist from Boulder and our specialist, Andy, are each crouched in what’s best described as a lopsided squat, crosses parallel to the ground. Andy’s like me, never been the biggest player on the roster – medium height; doesn’t carry some crazy quantity of muscle. The Boulder guy is the picture of his team’s home city, about the size of a small lighthouse. Dull eyes the colour of steel glare past Andy and shoot lasers at me from behind his helmet grille. If this man stick checked me, he might take my entire arm off while he’s at it. I pray he’s a FOGO – face-off, get off, meaning he’ll be subbed off once he’s done his thing – because if he isn’t, and he stays on to play, I’d consider it a miracle if all my appendages were still attached to my body by the end of this game.

The whistle blows, and Boulder and Andy are arm to arm. He pushes, Andy skirts around, knees scrabbling against the turf, trying his best to counter the massive opponent in the bid for the ball that sits between the both of them. Andy, thankfully, is just barely able to flick upward and get the ball in the air. I pluck it right up, look hard for an attacker, and then I hear a reliable, ‘BALL!’ I don’t give it a second thought before launching the ball his way.

Hot Rod Wilson zooms away with the goods, cradling it to keep it from falling out of the net on his way up to the goal. His stick moves in an arc of silver and pink owing to the Peppa Pig stickers his kid’s put all over the crosse. As much as we give him shit about it, he’s fast – he whips the ball straight towards the goal mere seconds into the game. Unfortunately, it’s just short of the goal by maybe an inch.

One of Boulder’s attackers makes his way towards our crease in the tenth minute, but our defender JJ is fast to sneak in a stick slap, causing the ball to fly out towards Drew. He snaps it out of the air and feeds it to Connor on midfield.

‘OPEN!’ I yell.

Swinging his stick around to avoid an opposing attacker, Connor thrusts the ball at me, and from there, it’s muscle memory. As a midfielder, it’s not my primary job to score, but when my team slides me the ball, it’s clear they’re placing trust in my judgement. I bolt down the field, all the while deciding my next move. I can pass this ball, or I take it all the way. At least two attackers are covered. The final Boulder defender is heading my way.

SHIT. He darts left, I go right, he mimics me, I spin the other way, and with a whip of my stick, it’s in the air, and then …

The lights go out like they always do when New Haven scores, crowd whooping as strobes streak across the field and my teammates rejoice. But when they turn back on, a distraught ‘ooh’ ripples through the first couple of rows, yelps of shock from the guys.

Turf pricks at my bare arms. The Boulder defenceman nearest to me – the one who’d covered me – mutters a shaky expletive. I immediately wonder why I’m not in more agony, and as the adrenaline wears off, it hits me like a ton of bricks to the face.

‘ FUCK! ’ I nearly scream. Tears well up in my eyes, sweat beading on my brow. I claw at the ground. My teeth saw at the mouthguard as they try in vain to bite away the pain.

A whistle blows in the distance, and the red fabric of the first-aid bag appears in the corner of my blurry field of vision. ‘Okay, okay. Take a deep breath,’ the team medic tries to calm me. ‘Take—’

‘My knee, my fucking knee.’ The energy trickles right out of my body like something’s sucked it all from me. I whimper as I try to clutch my right knee, but it won’t move, I can’t move, and it’s my worst nightmare. I run. I hustle. I’m a midfielder, it’s what I do, and now I can’t move.

‘Colt! Colt, bro … bro, hang in there.’ JJ’s voice joins our medic. He tosses his stick off to the side and kneels beside me. Even through the grille, I can see the fear in his eyes.

‘What happened? How does it look?’

It’s a dumb question. When you play lacrosse, you know exactly what different kinds of injuries feel like. We’ve been taking knocks to the head since we were ten. We grow up thinking we’re indestructible. Usually, I get back up right away. My mom used to call it one of my best qualities. This time around, I can’t manage it.

‘You gotta shut up, man.’ JJ, usually loud and boisterous, is mumbling, stringing his words together. ‘You gotta shut up so they can help you. Don’t look.’

I couldn’t if I tried; my eyes can barely stay open. It feels like someone’s wrenched my ligaments apart fibre by fibre, and while that pain should be all I’m able to concentrate on, I cling to desperate pleas instead, stuff that I pretend will be able to erase the injury as quickly as it happened.

‘Call my parents, man,’ I croak out, clutching JJ’s arm. ‘My mom.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll call ’em. Colt, they’re far, dude, you know they’re far. Won’t be here till tomorrow—’

‘Shut up.’ I grit my teeth against the now free-flowing tears streaking my cheeks. I just want my mom. I really just want my mom.

And as I grip my knee for dear life, the pleas of a desperate man weave their way through the tears. I want May . ‘May,’ I manage through waves of pain that send dark spots into my vision.

‘Who?’ Rod’s voice now, the thump of his knees against the grass as he presses a hand to my shoulder. One of the medics protests, and he says something I don’t catch in reply. ‘Who – Colt, I’ll call your mom,’ he assures me, voice wavering.

I blink away the floaters in my vision, and one more time, I barely manage to move my lips to form her name. No sound comes out.

Despite feeling like I’m going to pass out, I vividly recall every second when they load me onto a backboard to take me off the field and to the ambulance. The humiliation of not even being able to walk off the field on my own is almost as painful as the injury itself. Because it’s all crowds see now.

The paramedics buzz around me, asking me dozens of questions about scales from one to ten. Somewhere between it all, the realization dawns on me that it’s not just now. This is all anyone will see for the rest of my career.

‘You’re more than your injury,’ the doctors and therapists will tell me for weeks afterwards. I heard it enough times when Rod had his ACL injury the season I joined the team, and I’d love to believe it all.

I’d love to believe I’m still unbreakable, but I know that couldn’t be further from the truth.