accphotos.com blog

At Sean DeLaney’s house with his new puppy “Laney”.

UNC Lacrosse Project: The Art of Stringing

Earlier I wrote that one of the elements that makes visually lacrosse compelling to photograph is the equipment. The lacrosse stick is obviously the first piece of equipment to comes to fans minds. When it came to stringing, I think I came in with the assumption to most lacrosse players strung their own sticks. Back when I was in college, I worked for the company that owns Great Atlantic Lacrosse as a call center customer rep. Brian Mehm, who’s brother Kevin was playing at UNC at the time, worked there also and I remember him working in the corner stringing sticks. People who did not know how to string sticks would order them from Great Atlantic.

I assumed though that these were younger players who had not learned how to string sticks yet. I’ve learned though that even at the college level, most players still don’t string their own sticks. Instead, there are a select (and highly in demand) few who have the expertise and experience to be a stick stringer. So these players often find their time spent stringing sticks for their teammates, trying to get them as close as possible to the specs that their teammate wants. On Carolina’s team, those players are Gavin Petracca (Pops), Michael J. Burns (Jersey Mike) and Kevin Federico (K-Fed). Sophomore Michael Burns is one of the stick stringers on the team

I thought that getting photos of a player stringing a stick would make for darn interesting photography. A few weeks ago I got up with Pops at his place and got some nice stuff of him stringing a stick for Jack Ryan. Tonight I headed a few doors down from Pops’ pad to “the duplex” to get some photos of Jersey Mike in action who was stringing a stick for Joe Howard. I learned a few tricks that Mike uses to mold the mesh to just the right shape.

While trying to get some photos of Jersey Mike, competing for my attention was Callie, Kerry McCormick’s new puppy who like to be the center of attention. (He also like to sleep in my jacket for some reason). Hope you enjoy these two preview photos from my days with Pops and Jersey Mike. I’m of course, holding on my best photos for later. Gotta give you something to look forward to! Hopefully photos of K-Fed to come sometime soon.

At long last, the home opener. At 55 degrees, Fetzer Field and nearby Koskinen Stadium undoubtedly had the best weather in the nation for all the NCAA D1 programs opening their lacrosse program today.Normally for a 1pm game, I would get to Fetzer at around 12:15. But with my project, covering “behind-the-scenes” requires me to arrive much earlier. I aimed to be at the locker room at 11:00am so I left my house at around 10:40; my hope was to beat the team to the locker room.Halfway on my way to Chapel Hill though, I came to the last-minute realization that parking was going to be more problematic than I thought. Today at 1pm, not only was the UNC lacrosse team playing, but the men’s basketball team was also playing a home game. I’ve known that basketball and lacrosse would conflict for a long time, but it never dawned on me that parking would be tight. (Normally for basketball I’m spoiled with press parking so I don’t have to worry about it).

The parking difficulties threw out my idea of parking at Kenan Stadium where the locker room is. Instead, I had to park at Fetzer Field and make the walk to Kenan Stadium. I thought for sure that the extra time required to walk from Fetzer to the locker room would put me way past 11am and half the guys would be there before I was. Thankfully though, it all worked out as I beat everyone but the coaches there. Even better, I was able to get a some nice photos of the freshly-folded white jerseys laying on the stools that awaited the players as they walked in.This was the first time these jerseys have been laid out for the players. In the past, it’s been practice jerseys. If I was a freshman, I have to imagine that walking in, finding the jersey on my stool then holding it in my hands would be a particularly emotional moment.

More emotion though filled the locker room when the young children of Rip Davy, an All-American at UNC who passed away about one-month ago, came to visit the players in the locker room. Coach Haus introduce the team to the two young men, Will and Brooks, and challenged the team to win today’s game for them and show them what UNC lacrosse is about.The team did just that, winning 15-2, which included a 14-o scoring rampage. At one point, UNC was down 1-2, but just exploded offensively and defensively. Included in that 14-0 scoring run was a 3-minute period when the Heels were down a man for a stick penalty. But even a man down for 3 minutes, the Heels were still not scored on. Shane Walterhoefer won 12:18 of his faceoffs; Mike Burns won both of his. Sean Delaney had 4 point (2 G and 2 A).

Next weekend the Heels are heading to Denver. I had hoped to go, but there are so many things going on that weekend for me that I can’t travel. I will be photographing Duke lacrosse for Inside Lacrosse Saturday and UNC Basketball on Sunday.