The Wheelchair Quarterback

Although some would say that the 2017 Fayetteville-Manlius boys lacrosse team didn’t live up to expectations, their head coach believes that their season was a successful one.

Chris Kenneally said that this season was productive and helped his players become better people and that each one left as a better lacrosse player than they were when the season began.

The way that the players improved as people roots from the adversity that they faced in the middle of the season and then again at the end. The Hornets, who finished the season with a record of 12-6, including eight wins and two losses in league play, went through many hills and valleys.

They weren’t the same team in the second half of the season as they were in the first half of the schedule.

Despite being on the good side of .500 in their final five games of the regular season, the Hornets didn’t go into the postseason playing as well as they were at the beginning of the year, as the three victories were by a total of five goals.

And those close wins were over Baldwinsville, Liverpool, and Syracuse, three teams that the Hornets beat handily, by a total of 44 goals, in the first go-around.

The late-season struggles made Hornet players disagree with their head coach when it came to the taste that this season left in their mouths. Instead of thinking of this as a productive year like the veteran did, Ryan Cicci and Donovan Welsh expressed their frustrations with their senior seasons.

Cicci described the season as “shocking” and said that he and his teammates “didn’t live up to expectations,” while Welsh flashed back and pointed to the controversial call that ended their season in the Section III Class A semifinal against Baldwinsville and said that “it was just a tough way to end the season because we probably should have won.”

That was their competitive instincts speaking, something that F-M had throughout this season.

The Hornets had six Division I players on their roster this season and they received huge contributions from every one of them. Welsh, who led the team in both goals and assists, has received a few offers from Division I schools, and Cicci has committed to Canisius College.

Some other Hornets who have decided on their college destinations include Brett Barlow, Sam Stratton, Luke Burnam, and Luke Hamel.

But their departures took the back seat in the days following the season-ending loss. Kenneally told his team to go down to the field for one last time just to have a fun scrimmage and to get together for one last time, but, ended up informing them that he has coached his final game and has retired.