PAC-6 athletic directors decided on Friday, April 11, to cancel the conference lacrosse tournament that was set for April 29 and May 1. Also cancelled were the conference baseball, softball and soccer tournaments.

The ADs said there were just too many makeup games to get in and not enought time, said Coach Jim Kirkley. Also, there's no guarantee that the weather will improve enough to even get in the makeup games, much less the tournaments.

The Riverside lacrosse schedule, as a result, has been changed. The schedule for the rest of the regular season is RHS at Jordan on April 22, Hoggard at RHS on April 25, RHS at Orange on April 28, and Chapel Hill at RHS on May 1 (Senior Night).

Posted 5:00 p.m. EST, Feb. 10, 2003

New Riverside Assistant Coach Pete Kitrinos (left) discusses the finer points of stick protection with a young Pirate on the team's first day of practice on Feb. 10.

The 2003 lacrosse season began today when the Pirates took the field, er, the parking lot, for their first practice of the year. The recent rains had made a mess of the practice field so Head Coach Jim Kirkley had the team practice on the asphalt on opening day.

A noticeable opening-day change since the past few years was the assistant coach who will be in charge of the Riverside offense. Instead of Glenn Estacio, it will be Pete Kitrinos, who many Riverside fans know as the coach of the Blue Crabs during the 2001 T.A.L.L. Fall Ball season. Estacio, who patrolled the Riverside sidelines for many years, is now the head coach at Chapel Hill High School.

Kitrinos hails from Annapolis, Md., where he played at St. Mary's High School. He was a starting middie at the University of New Haven, graduating in 1996. After graduation he was an assistant coach at New Haven, a Div. II school.

Since moving to the Triangle area he has played for the Great Atlantic Lacrosse Club team in Chapel Hill and been an assistant coach at Cardinal Gibbon and at Jordan. He is an analytical chemist at GlaxoSmithKline.

Riverside players do line drills in the wet parking lot at Riverside on the opening day of practice Feb. 10. A sloppy practice field resulted in the team having to begin the season on asphalt.

He joins a coaching staff that also includes Rich Ladd, a 2001 Riverside graduate, and Thurston Webb, a sophomore at UNC. They, with Coach Kirkley, will try to coach the Pirates to their fifth NCHSLA championship in six years. This will be a tall order considering that they lost quite a bit of senior leadership and lacrosse acumen to graduation last year. But, hey, it seems that was the case in 1999 after the stellar 1998 squad went off to college, but they managed to win it all again.

If the Pirates do manage to win the NCHSLA again this year it will be the first time they've three-peated. When they had the chance to do it in 2000, they fell short in the semis against eventual winner Southeast Guilford, the team they beat in the finals in 1999.

Stay tuned for the JV and varsity rosters, roster photos and the season outlook by Coach Kirkley. We'll get those up as soon as they're available.

Posted 8:00 p.m. EST, Feb. 8, 2003

There are two changes to NCAA rules for 2003 that will affect prep play since the NCHSLA follows NCAA rules.

First, the sidelines of the box, which were previously dotted, will now be solid lines. They can be either of the same color as the rest of the lines or an alternate color. This is to help officials see whether or not a player is actually in or out of the box.

Second, at the coin flip, the winning team has the choice of choosing which goal to defend/attack or choosing to take the first alternating possession.

Also, there is some discussion of how the NCHSLA might be able to diverge from NCAA rules. The main issue is the color of t-shirts, sweat pants and compression shorts. According to the NCAA, these must be the same color for everyone on a team, if they wear them. This rule has not been enforced in the past.

There is discussion of immediately enforcing this rule for t-shirts since this would not result in a major financial burden for players and parents. The NCAA rule is that t-shirts must be gray, white or a team color, and that everyone must wear the same color. The coaches will probably vote on this soon.

As for sweatpants and compression shorts, these are more expensive. One suggestion is to give everyone a year's lead time so they can buy the new color they require. This also must be voted on and approved by game officials.

Another issue is overtimes in JV games. Usually, when a JV game goes into overtime, the varsity game is delayed. It is not unusual for there to be two, three or four OTs in a JV game that has ended in a tie in regulation. Proposals include: 1) a maximum of two OTs, 2) no OTs at all and the game is ruled a tie.

Coaches and officials will discuss these issues soon. Keep posted to this Web site for updates. In the meantime, feel free to put in your two cents on these issue on the rhslacrosse.com forum.

Posted 9:30 p.m. EST, Feb. 5, 2003

Coffman	Howard
Ham	Brewer

Coach Jim Kirkley has announced that four seniors will share captain honors for 2003, only the third time the Pirates have had four captains, not the second as previously reported. (This error was pointed out by one of the 2000 captains. Sorry.).

The 2003 captains will be Cory Coffman, Anthony Howard, Zach Brewer and Owen Ham. Coffman, a midfielder who also plays attack, was the team's leading scorer in 2002 with 61 goals and 30 assists. Ham, a former midfielder who switched to attack last year, is the second-leading returning scorer with 40 goals and eight assists.

Midfielder Howard had 15 goals last year, the biggest being the winning goal against Chapel Hill in overtime to win the state championship. Brewer had 222 saves in goal last year and a 62.2 percent save percentage for the Pirates.

Coffman, Howard and Ham combined for 336 ground balls in 2002 (130 for Coffman, 110 for Howard and 96 for Ham), and 120 loose balls caused (49 for Ham, 45 for Coffman and 26 for Howard).

In 1998 the Pirates were captained by Scott Gordon, Greg Tate, Sean Hizey and Nick Scroggs, and in 2000 the Pirates were captained by Tom Raspet, Jon Ham, Robert Douglass and James Zawadowski.

Posted 8:30 a.m. EST, Jan. 25, 2003

Tony Cullen

The Duke turf fields are located just behind Koskinen Stadium off the 15-501 Bypass. When you get off 15-501 go to the light at the top of the hill where Science Drive comes into Cameron. Take a left and then the first right. The fields will be visible on your left after you turn. If there is no parking left there, go back across Science Drive to the large parking lot there.

The Tony Cullen Memorial Lacrosse Tournament will be held on Sunday, Feb. 2, at the Duke astroturf fields. The tournament, which will benefit the Tony Cullen Memorial Scholarship Fund, will begin at 10 a.m. and end at 4:30 p.m.

The tournament is named for legendary Duke player Tony Cullen, who later coached lacrosse at Duke and went on to have a stellar officiating career. He lost his battle with cancer in May of 2002.

Donations will be accepted at the gate and all proceeds will benefit the Tony Cullen Memorial Scholarship Fund. The funds raised will provide an annual scholarship, which will benefit a NC high school lacrosse player who attends a NC college to study and play lacrosse.

The event, which will feature games of 30-minute running halves, is being sponsored by the Deep South Lacrosse Conference Coaches, Brine Inc. and Great Atlantic Lacrosse Company.

Posted 9:50 p.m. EST, Dec. 10, 2003

Riverside has openings for two coaching spots: 1) a varsity assistant, and 2) the head JV coach.

Anyone who is interested in either of these paid positions may contact Riverside Coach Jim Kirkley by email (his email link is at the bottom of this page) or at home (he's in the book).

Due to job conflicts Sean Hizey, varsity assistant last year, and Matt Plumer, head JV coach last year, will not be coming back. Two college students are also going to assist with the varsity this year: Rich Ladd and Thurston Webb.

Brogden Middle School, Riverside's prime feeder school, also is in need of a head coach for the coming season. Many of Riverside's current stars were part of the undefeated (12-0) Brogden team in 1999, so it would be a shame for that program to deteriorate. If you're interesed, you may contact Coach Kirkley and he'll get you to the right person at Brogden.

Also, on the varsity level, Orange High School and Cedar Ridge High School both need coaches for the coming year. Anyone interested may contact Coach Kirkley or the schools.

Riverside will have its work cut out for it on this year's Northern Exposure Tour to Charlottesville. They will play Albemarle (14-4 last year) and Monticello (12-3 last year), both of whom won their divisions in 2002.

Albemarle, of the Northwest AAA Conference, lost to W.T. Woodson in the state championship game two years ago and Monticello, of the Va. II-III Independent AA Conference, defeated Albemarle for the first time ever last year [read story of the game]. Albemarle finished 2002 with a Laxpower ranking of 18th in the state and Monticello finished ranked 19th among the 96 lacrosse programs in Virginia.

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