Lynn lax coach Pappagianopoulas has reasons for optimism

Improved numbers and depth should help the Lynn lacrosse team this season, coach Peter Pappagianopoulas said.”The numbers seem to be growing at both schools, which is great to see,” said Pappagianopoulas, whose team draws students from both Classical and English. This is the third year of the merger and the numbers look good with 50 players splite between the varsity and junior varsity.”Hopefully it’s a resurgence of excitement in the game,” Pappagianopoulas said. “A lot of football players seem to have an interest. It helps our program quite a bit.”Pappagianopoulas said the numbers are the best he’s seen.”I coached Classical before the combination, and this year by far blows away the numbers,” he said. “Most years, we were lucky if we had 35 combined.”The coach credited “a couple of young big guys” with adding strength to the team, including newcomer Ricky Bigwood of Lynn Classical. He added that Jared Dwyer, who plays football for English, provides “a little bit of strength to the field,” while Neil Whittredge, who is junior class president at Classical, has brought more speed.Whittredge’s speed will complement that of English junior Bucky Surette, a midfielder and faceoff specialist, and fellow Bulldog Jordan Morelli, who transferred from St. Mary’s last year but did not play lacrosse.”We have a couple of strong returnees back,” Pappagianopoulas said.He said that Surette and Classical senior Mike Duggan, a midfielder and faceoff specialist, headline that list. He also mentioned English player Tyler Slepoy, who played defense last year, and noted that Jack Carter, an honor student at English who took year’s lacrosse season off, is now back and has stepped up as a leader. All of them are hockey players. So pleased is the coach with his tryouts that he has delayed choosing captains until today.”I had them show me what they were going to do in the first two weeks,” he said. “The captains would depend on what comes out of it. With the work ethic this week, it’s going to be tough.”Next Saturday, on Easter eve, the team begins its regular season at Salem. The game was initially scheduled for 7 p.m. but was changed to 12:30 p.m.Lynn will play 18 regular-season games in 2010. In addition to its Northeastern Conference slate, the team will face St. Mary’s, Nashoba Tech, Malden, Medford and Georgetown.”Going into every year, you hope it winds up as a tournament season,” Pappagianopoulas said. “We shall see.” He also listed as goals “just to support and continue to promote the game in the city, improve on last year and draw more students into the game.”Lynn struggled in 2009, going 3-13, and the team graduated all three starting attackmen, all three starting defensemen and the starting goalie. The coach cited inexperience as a weakness this season.However, he said, “The team this year seems a lot more together. This year, it seems to be working hard in a positive direction.”He also praised the academic work of his student-athletes, including his new goalie, Riley McManus of Classical, who is also an Upward Bound student in the City of Lynn.”He’s another great kid and a very good student,” Pappagianopoulas said. “We have quite a few good students on top of great kids in our program, which you like to see.” And in general, he said, “Grades are better this year. I put a focus on grades as a teacher (he teaches biology and anatomy at English). A student-athlete’s not just an athlete.”The coach said that team numbers are “fairly balanced” between Classical and English, “slightly leaning towards English, partly because I teach at English.”Pappagianopoulas himself is a Classical graduate who played lacrosse for the Rams and then at Salem State College for a couple of years. He coached JV lacrosse at Classical for three years, then took over the Rams varsity and then the combined Lynn team.His assistants also have local ties. Kevin Driscoll is a former English coach and Adam Saltzman played at English for Driscoll and another former coach, Bil