On the 20-yard line, six defenders stood in a circle. They’d given up a goal. And as protocol, Lindsay Rogers would speak, as she always did, all about mistakes.

So gathered inside the huddle, the defender on the No. 2 Syracuse women’s lacrosse team would start, as they always recalled: Yeah, they scored on us.

What are important are the answers: Who should have slid? What happened to that dodge? How did she score? Rogers, the reigning Big East defensive player of the year, always has answers, defenders said, because from the backfield she supports them.

‘Like the back to our defense,’ midfielder Sarah Sedgwick said. ‘And she’s not afraid to say no.’

It’s become routine. In the player who speaks inside the huddle after every opponent goal, the Orange has found a leader to its defense, where it needs guidance. Rogers provides repetition, to embed the notion that a goal scored on one defender is a goal scored on the entire defense.

‘Lindsay Rogers is that catalyst that’s going to make that happen,’ head coach Gary Gait said. ‘To improve every player from the bottom up … A leader in the defensive end, where we need to improve.’

So the Orange named the junior, with a year’s experience of defense, a captain. Rogers commands the defense. She tells those older than her to work a little harder. She’s the lone junior captain.

But the captainship came as a surprise.

The Irondequoit (N.Y.) High School recruit traveled an hour’s trip to Syracuse from Rochester to play in the midfield. Since elementary school, the middle felt right, Rogers said, because she wanted to run entire games. She wanted to do everything.

‘It’s more fun to be part of the whole thing,’ Rogers said.

Then Gait came along. With a new head coach in her sophomore year, it became apparent that the team needed more defense. More defenders. And Rogers went.

‘I was easy to persuade,’ she said. ‘He needed someone who was aggressive and vocal to get in on the ground balls and really help the defense pick it up a level.’

So the defense found its voice. Found a leader in Rogers, who recorded career highs with 25 groundballs, 33 draw controls and 15 caused turnovers, before winning the conference Defensive Player of the Year over preseason nominee Loyola’s Kristen Stone. And it was all a surprise.

‘I had no idea,’ said Rogers. ‘It was a big surprise that I had to make a speech, though.’

Still, the title of ‘Player of the Year’ wasn’t the accolade she wanted. Last year, the SU defense had faults. And Rogers was a part of that.

When the Orange should have been pressuring, Gait said, it went man-to-man. Defense needed to create a zone. There were signs of it at the NCAA semifinals, when Northwestern took advantage.

‘Looking back, (the defense) can say, ‘Oh, we definitely should of challenged them,” midfielder Christina Dove said. ‘If we had taken them head-on and taken the first defender and drawn the ball, it could have been more successful.’

Last year’s review came months too late. Rogers reviews every defensive mishap after every goal now. The focus in the huddle is to find how to change the defense before it becomes too late, before they give up a game. That’s Rogers’ role now.

‘I’m a junior spokesman,’ she said.

When the Orange travels west to face its first ranked opponent this Friday, No. 16 Stanford, Rogers will lend her voice to her defense, to try to ensure that it can change on the fly and on toward the future. Rogers will try to embed that notion – defenders shouldn’t meet in a huddle of six at the 20-yard line, shouldn’t be predictable, shouldn’t let the opponent score.

‘She corrects our mistakes,’ Dove said. ‘So it becomes second nature.’

edpaik@syr.edu

Published on February 16, 2009 at 12:00 pm