The pandemic hit the high-school class of 2021 quickest and hardest. Student-athletes struggled to process it all, as their college plans blew up and their beloved squash courts were redened as boxes of super-spread, their elders blocked by yellow police tape. “I’ll always wonder what would’ve happened— and who they could have wowed,” Inside Lacrosse CEO Terry Foy told me, referring to the high-school seniors. “To have that opportunity lost …” His voice trailed off?, before he picked up again, mournfully: “?The kid who would have gone to Yale now goes to Georgetown. ?e kid who would have gone to Georgetown now goes to Loyola. On and on. And then eventually you get down to Wentworth. And then you just don’t play college sports.”
“I understand the frustration,” says Je¤ Brameier, who is entering his 36th year as the lacrosse coach at Darien High School, consistently one of the highest-ranked public-school lacrosse teams in the country. “I've had a few team captains who were among my best defensive kids ever. Near-perfect GPAs. I couldn't get them into an Ivy. I tried.”
