When the Boston Cannons won the Major League Lacrosse Championship on Sunday, it was the culmination of five years’ work for head coach/director of player personnel Sean Quirk, a Nahant resident who has been around the game at all levels for years.
“It was a great few weeks in Annapolis (Md.) and it was a great way to cap things off,” Quirk said of the win. “Our guys showed so much mental and physical toughness through the shortened season, and that’s really what put us over the edge.”
It wasn’t an easy road for Quirk and the Cannons, who played a seven-game season in a span of just 10 days before moving on to a four-team playoff. But once that four-team playoff came around, two of the four teams were forced to forfeit after multiple personnel from each team tested positive for COVID-19. With the semifinal games canceled, the Cannons faced the Denver Outlaws in the championship game on Sunday, which the Cannons won by a score of 13-10.
“The biggest adjustment was without question the time crunch,” said Quirk, who also serves as an associate athletic director at Endicott College. “We’re used to playing one game a week during a normal season and all of a sudden we were forced to play seven games in 10 days, and that’s a big difference. Not only that, there was the issue of not having a real training camp and not being able to fully evaluate some players. So there were a lot of things we had to work through.”
But once it came time to play games, Quirk felt that his Cannons were in a good spot.
“We felt that if we were able to get three wins, we’d have a good chance to be in the playoffs,” Quirk said. “We won two games in the first three days and our guys were still fresh, but we still had to grind our way to get those four wins that we ended up with.”
Quirk also commended Major League Lacrosse for its handling of the pandemic and the bubble that the teams were confined to during the season. All teams stayed in Annapolis the entire season, and were only permitted to travel between their hotel and the stadium each day.
“I think the MLL did a phenomenal job explaining what we all needed to do to make this a successful endeavor, and then they executed on it,” said Quirk. “We were tested before we left for Annapolis and then we were tested every day when we were there. We were the only ones in the hotel and we only traveled between there and the stadium, so it all felt really safe. We all wore masks the whole time except for when the players were out on the field, and coaches wore masks on the sidelines. It was all really well done.”
Now that the Cannons season has come to an end, Quirk can turn his full attention back to his job at Endicott, where the school and athletic department are also trying to get a handle on the COVID-19 situation. Endicott’s conference, the Commonwealth Athletic Conference (CCC), has already suspended fall sports, but the school is allowing teams to hold individual training sessions and practices at their own discretion for the time being.
“It’s something that we talk about every day,” Quirk said. “At this point you can really only take things one day at a time because everything is changing so quickly. It will be a challenge navigating these waters over the next few months.”
As for his sport, which has been deemed “High Risk” by the state of Massachusetts’ latest youth and adult sport guidelines, Quirk says there’s still ways to play the game safely.
“There’s no getting around the fact that full-contact lacrosse can be considered high risk because of the proximity, but at the same time we had doctors and experts in Annapolis telling us that the risk was somewhat mitigated by us being in an outdoor environment,” said Quirk. “We were in a bubble so that might have something to do with it, but there’s also a way to play lacrosse without contact. I run multiple clinics and camps for non-contact lacrosse with social distancing practices in place, so that can keep the kids playing without as much of the risk.”
