You’ve probably heard this by now. Athlete suffers an ankle injury making it difficult to even walk. But his team’s in a championship tournament and he can’t bear to just sit and watch.
So, he sucks it up and plays. And he’s rewarded with a championship.
This sounds like the saga of the Boston Celtics’ Kristaps Porzingis, right? Yes, but in this case, it’s the saga of Jack Doherty, faceoff specialist extraordinaire, whose steady hand with the draws helped his St. John’s Prep boys lacrosse team win its fourth straight state title.
Doherty is one of a group of Marbleheaders who played on St. John’s this season: Luke Kelly (who scored five goals in the 17-13 win over Needham), Cam McCarthy, Jack Weissenburger, Will Crawford, Drew Klein and Kurt Schillinger.
Moreover, he is the product of an active and effective town lacrosse system that has produced enough players for the high school team to have achieved great success as well. And Doherty’s best friend is the captain of that team, Charlie Grenier.
Doherty himself is a two-sport captain (the other being hockey), and has only one less accumulation of state titles (six, two in hockey) than his teammate and friend at The Prep, Jake Vana.
Doherty had to endure the ankle discomfort, which wasn’t easy, he said, almost in passing while talking about his season.
“A lot of Advil, a lot of taping, and then I just had to push through it,” Doherty said. “I wanted to play, though. I didn’t want to miss this. So I had to push through it.”
In lacrosse, winning faceoffs is a big part of the game, because once a team gets control of the ball, it can keep it for incredibly long stretches. He estimates he won 75 percent of his draws in the state championship game, 80 percent against BC High in the semifinals, and all of them in the quarterfinal. He missed one game because of the ankle injury,
Faceoffs are taught intensively in clinics, Doherty said.
“I trained out in Natick, at the Faceoff Factory, with Joe Nardella,” he said. “I did a ton of work with them. They got me where I am in my faceoff career. They are such a huge part of the game.”
Unlike hockey, lacrosse faceoffs can look like two lobsters going at it in the middle of the field. The opponents can practically be on all fours fighting for possession of the ball.
Naturally, this takes some conditioning.
“Obviously, I work on my forearms a lot,” he said. “Then my shoulders. And, I really have to work on my legs a lot. There is a lot of deadlifting, squatting. I see a huge difference in how I do when I work on my legs.”
Doherty will go to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., major in economics and plans to play both hockey and lacrosse. He says he can’t determine which is his preferred sport, though.
“If you ask me in winter, I’d say hockey,” he said. “But if you ask me four days ago, I’d say lacrosse. They’re both contact sports, and take a certain amount of toughness.”
Last Saturday’s state championship game against Needham was unusual for The Prep, Doherty said.
“It was a wild game – a shootout,” he said. “Most of our games in the tournament were defensive games. This one wasn’t. We don’t usually get into shootouts like that.”
Kelly, a junior and fellow Marbleheader, scored five goals along with Vana to lead the charge.
“It’s hard to wrap myself around the fact that we’ve won four titles,” he said. “To be honest, I didn’t think about it much, but obviously it’s really cool.”
He said aside from sports, he’ll remember the brotherhood of friends he made, and the things he learned from upperclassmen when he first entered St. John’s.
“Guys like Jim Ayers (who played hockey and lacrosse as well) were great teammates and great role models,” he said. “However, I’ll cherish the championships.”
