Though it was the boys lacrosse team that set off the raucous celebration in town last weekend, there has been much happening on the Canandaigua high school campus and the community in recent weeks.
Emotions have ranged from the sheer joy associated with winning on the field to moments of terror in the minutes following a student’s suicide inside the school building.
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Ed Mulheron admits to having mild doubts when he learned the Canandaigua boys lacrosse program had won a contest and that camera crews would be following the Braves around for the entire season.
When you have 30 players to watch over and know you’re already starting the season with a target on your back after pushing the best program in the state to the brink last spring, the added attention that comes with having your season documented here has the potential to be a distraction.
“We put in for it and it was like buying a lottery ticket – you never think you’re going to win,” Mulheron, the Canandaigua coach, said. “Then we won, and it was, ‘Okay...‘”
On the plus side, the Canandaigua program was getting well over $30,000 of top-of-the-line uniforms and equipment from New Balance as part of the deal in which the Braves season would be documented in approximately 10 online webisodes.
No one, though, could have blamed the Braves had they had second thoughts after the contest entry submitted by booster Dan Knapton was selected as the winner. After all, these things can turn more frightening than a Stephen King novel.
Bobby Knight gave author and newspaper columnist John Feinstein unrestricted access to the Indiana University basketball team for a year in the mid-1980s and the result was a “A Season on the Brink,” a best-selling book that made the coach look even worse than his reputation – no easy feat.
And then there was the 1990 book “Friday Night Lights,” in which H.G. Bissinger followed the Odessa Permian football team through the 1988 high school season and painted a most unflattering picture of life in the Texas town that included episodes of racism and seemingly skewed priorities.
Mulheron said the proverbial ice was broken with the crew from Tangerine Films within a matter of days once practice began in March and the focus was quickly back where it belonged: renewed pursuit of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class B championship after having come within a goal of the legendary West Genesee Wildcats in the 2008 state semifinals.
“I never expected the professionalism and the amount of cameras and equipment,” Mulheron said recalling the first days. “At first I was like, “WelI . . .’ But once I met the camera crew it was instantly a great experience. They are literally a part of our team. It’s been great. I’d do it again in a second.”
Of course he would, because Mulheron was recalling the series of events just minutes after Canandaigua followed up on its eighth Section V championship with a 10-5 victory over Niskayuna.
Even in the aftermath of the title game in Rochester, N.Y., the cameras were following Mulheron around as he accepted congratulations on the field. But the coach was oblivious to the lens, mics and booms, as has been the case since very early in the process.
“It’s been a great team experience for our kids, myself and the community,” he said. “We’ve learned a lot and I hope we represented ourselves, the school district, the city and everybody in Canandaigua in a manner that they can be proud.”
Canandaigua head coach Ed Mulheron (right) following his team's state championship victory over Niskayuna.
Photo by Mike Janes
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It’s no accident that Mulheron speaks about pride, because the boys and girls lacrosse teams are held in the highest of esteem around town each spring. The celebration on the courthouse steps after the bus pulled back into town after the state final was loud and enthusiastic as fans showed their appreciation for the school’s first state championship in the sport.
And eight weeks earlier it had been the town’s time to celebrate another accomplishment after the girls team ascended to No. 1 in the country in the Laxpower.com computer rankings following a successful three-game swing into Maryland to play some of the country’s finest teams.
The girls, though, saw their season come to an end with a 13-9 loss in the NYSPHSAA semifinals the day before the boys won their championship, and it come in a fashion that left some people with bitter feelings.
The loss to Yorktown was closer than the score indicated since the Braves had to take high-risk gambles after falling a goal down with 1:25 to play in Cortland, and it came under awkward circumstances because junior midfielder Abbey Friend, who has given an early commitment to play for North Carolina after the 2010 high school season, was not with the team.
Instead, Friend was in Prague, Czechoslovakia to practice with the Canadian national team ahead of the FIL World Cup taking place June 17-27. Coach Sue Ellis told reporters Friend broke the news to her team shortly after the NYSPHSAA quarterfinals the previous weekend. Though Canandaigua’s roster is deep, Friend’s presence could certainly have made a difference and boosted the team into the final the following day.
Instead, her decision to leave became the subject of chatter – some of it angry – around town. The debate became so heated on a popular upstate online forum that several threads related to it were purged by editors.
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Mulheron and the Braves celebrate their Section V championship.
Photo by Mike Janes
However, the discussion about whether Friend was being disloyal to her teammates by leaving for Europe ranked somewhere between trite and trivial because of what transpired two days earlier.
Student Christopher Laribee, 18, was arrested by Canandaigua Police and charged with second-degree aggravated harassment. He was ordered held in the Ontario County Jail in lieu of $10,000 cash bail or $25,000 bond.
A text message that Laribee sent sparked an investigation and his subsequent arrest. A police spokesman said Laribee made threats against individual students, as well as a group of people. A search of his home turned up five bullets and a powder in a plastic bottle that may have been part of an attempt to make a bomb and an attempt to execute a Columbine-like slaughter, and further investigation turned up poems he had written with themes of death.
Taken as an isolated incident it would have been enough to cause concern for students, their families, school officials and law-enforcement authorities.
In the context of another recent event, though, it was a chilling reminder of how lucky they were to have avoided disaster back on May 5. That’s the day that 17-year-old senior Thomas Kane killed himself with a shotgun in a high school bathroom. A police search turned up ammunition and two Molotov cocktails in his school locker and evidence that he, too, was also contemplating carrying out an attempted massacre.
The atmosphere on campus since has understandably been tense. In at least a small way, the lacrosse team’s success diminished some of the stress.
“The reality is we’ve had a tough month and a half or so,” Mulheron said. “It affected out team, but we found a way and the kids found a way to deal with it. We moved on, and if this brought a little ray of sunshine into peoples’ lives that’s even better.
“We’ve been able to work through it. The group of kids we have care about each other. They care, the community cares about people and we found our way through it.”
John Schiano, who has written about high school sports in western and central New York for more than 25 years, covers New York for MaxPreps. He may be reached at johnschianosports@gmail.com.
