By Pat O'Malley - Baltimore Sun - 12-23-1987
Buddy Beardmore, of Severna Park, coached the team a year ago and is its general manager now. He’s the University of Maryland Lacrosse Hall of Famer who earned All-American status three times as a player and then coached the Terps to two national championships.
Head coach Glen Little, a former back-up goalie, lives in Crofton, as does public relations director Bob Zurfluhis. Trainer Leroy “Brandy” Brandimore lives in Arnold.
And eight players are county products:
Beardmore’s son, Jimmy, and fellow Severna Parkers John Lamon, Matt McGeady, Kevin Forrester and Don Sadler; brothers Joe and Mark Gold, both Brooklyn Park High graduates; and Arundel alumnus John Moser.
Lamon and Forrester, both 30 years old, are the veterans in both the outdoor and indoor versions of the game.
“It’s a game where you can score in bunches. You can be down five to six goals and not be out of the game,” said Lamon, a former All-American on Beard- more’s NCAA championship teams at Maryland in the mid- 1970s.
“Fans enjoy the constant contact with no such thing as slow-down offenses as you have in the outdoor game.
“There’s no place to hide or spread out like you can on a lacrosse field,” he said.
Jim Beardmore will bring a new, crowd-pleasing dimension to the indoor game this season with his knack for leaving the goal wide open and going out to get in on the offense.
“I’m learning that you have to be much more careful out there, because there’s not that much room to move around,” he said.
That’s the best thing about indoor lacrosse. It does something the outdoor game can’t do brings the action to you. You can more consistently feel the contact and action in the game played indoors.
Little is a native of Toronto who played for the Maryland Arrows in the 1975 box lacrosse season and has had a lot of experience in the
game’s indoor version. He agrees with Jim Beardmore that the ball comes at the goalie like a meteor.
“Every time John [Lamon] cranks up in practice, I cringe, because he’s got such a cannon,” said Jim Beardmore.
“They fire them at you from about six or seven yards out uncontested, and you’re trying to guard a 3-foot cage. You have to dress like a hockey goalie for your protection.”
In a recent practice, Jim Beardmore took a shot in the head, dislocated his shoulder and in the middle of that night ran an extremely high fever. His parents rushed him to the hospital, and he recovered.
The key to success, as many lacrosse veterans who didn’t come back out this year found out, is being in tiptop shape. Guys like Lamon and Forrester, 30, have come back in much better shape than last year, their faces right up against the glass [Plexiglas boundaries around the court] and often hang over it,” said Lamon. “They are definitely part of the indoor game, and it’s something some of the new players have to get used to.”
In two short years with franchises in Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Jersey, the game has appealed to people from high schoolers to those in their 40s and 50s. The Wave drew an average of 6,000 to 7,000 per game last year, and nearly 15,000 showed up in the Spectrum and Meadowlands.
