Page 12 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 3 Spring 2013

ATHLETICS
Vermont transplant Devin Clifford ’03
helps spread lacrosse south to Kentucky
By Jana F. Brown
Thinking
the BOX
H
Inside
aving successfully made the tran-
sition from participant to coach,
Devin Clifford ’03 still itched to
return to the field as a competitive
lacrosse player. After a satisfying career
as a defenseman for the Colgate men’s
lacrosse team, Clifford had tried out
unsuccessfully for the German national
team in 2009.
“I forgot what it took, and I wasn’t
ready, wasn’t training,” he recalls, not-
ing that his father’s German citizenship
allowed him to try out for the squad.
But in the fall of 2011, Clifford got a
reprieve. The transplanted Vermonter
heard murmurings of a semi-profes-
sional men’s indoor lacrosse league
sprouting up along the East Coast and
inland. Rumor had it there was support
for a franchise in Lexington, Ky., not far
from his new home in Louisville, where
he had settled in 2007 to teach middle-
and high-school science and coach la-
crosse while earning his M.A. in teaching.
“This came along and I thought, ‘This
time, I am getting in shape,’” he says.
His efforts at tryout combines in Cin-
cinnati and Virginia earned Clifford a
chance at the inaugural North American
Lacrosse League (NALL) draft. Training
camp followed, with Clifford winning one
of the 21 roster spots for the (even more
fortunately) Louisville-based Kentucky
Stickhorses. Two years have passed since
then, and Clifford recently completed his
second season with the team, which made
it to the league title match before losing
to the Boston Rockhoppers on March 16.
With the help of YouTube, Clifford
became a quick study of the American
indoor game, modeled after the popular
Canadian box version of lacrosse. Coming
from a rich hockey background, includ-
ing his time as a goaltender for the SPS
boys hockey team, he had a bit of a head
start. Box lacrosse is similar to hockey in
that each team consists of five players
and a goaltender. And the game is actu-
ally played inside a hockey rink outfitted
with turf. The strategy and pace resemble
hockey as well, with little space and, there-
fore, time to think, requiring players to
react more rapidly than on the 100-yard
outdoor lacrosse field, which features 10
players per side. The game also incorp-
orates elements of basketball, including
a 30-second shot clock and fast breaks
on the transition.
“It’s awesome,” says Clifford, who plays
defense for the Stickhorses. “The games
are so much quicker indoors.”
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