Thursday, October 29, 1987

By BILL FLEISCHMAN, Daily News Sports Writer

Staring at the overhead television monitor, Brad Kotz appeared to be mesmerized.

On the screen at Ovations in the Spectrum yesterday was the Major Indoor Lacrosse League promotional film, complete with goals, body checks, an occasional slash and a few near beheadings.

"This sport is so much more exciting than the field game," said Kotz, a former Syracuse All-America and a new member of the Philadelphia Wings. "Once you get playing it, you get the adrenaline going. The intensity level is what attracts a lot of the players."

Money obviously isn't the reason the Wings and the other three league teams play their eight-game season that begins in January. Kotz, who played last year for the league's Washington entry, and his teammates receive $150 a game, plus expenses. Since all the Wings either live in the Philadelphia area or in Maryland, expenses are limited to car mileage, I-95 tolls and meals.

Kotz, now a student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says lacrosse gets in the players' blood. For many players, too much of their blood has been spilled on the indoor carpets. What Dave Brown, of the Flyers, did to the Rangers' Tomas Sandstrom the other night was vicious, but in the MILL it has been almost routine.

"For the game to succeed," Kotz said, "those guys have to be weeded out and we have to get more of the finesse offense-defense-type players in there. That's what they're attempting to do this year. I don't think there will be as many blatant assaults as there were last year."

Mike French, a full-time accountant who is moving into the Wings' general manager's chair after leading the team in goal scoring last season, and new coach Dave Evans are aware that indoor lacrosse cannot eliminate all the hitting and expect to attract good crowds. The 14,903, 12,212 and 9,397 who paid to see the Wings' three home games last season at the Spectrum would have been disappointed if the games were minus body checks and a few fights.

"I have two main goals for the team," said Evans, a Canadian coach who will work full-time with the Wings through their season. "I want a winning team and an entertaining team. To be an entertaining team to me means two things: We're going to be a running team and a hitting team."

Added French: "I think there'll be a lot less blind-side hitting and moving picks, things any goon can do. Our franchise is eliminating all those types of people."

Last year, the Wings were a Maryland-oriented team. They still are practicing in Edgewood, Md., near Baltimore. But French, 34, is concentrating on bringing in Philadelphia-area players. The former Cornell All-America said there are 25 Philadelphia players in the Wings' training camp.

WINGING IT: The returning Wings include captain John Tucker, Paul French and John Conley. Draftees include goalkeeper Vinnie Pfeiffer, who played for the New Jersey Saints last year, Tom Haus, the NCAA Player of the Year at North Carolina last year, and Mike Page (Penn) . . . The Wings (3-3 last season) will play four games at the Spectrum, all on Saturdays, beginning Jan. 16.

Thursday, January 7, 1988

TV/RADIO TALK

By Gail Shister

SHORT STUFF. All-sports WIP-AM (610) will carry live all four road games of the Philadelphia Wings - our town's indoor lacrosse team, in case you didn't know. (Who knew?) Prism's Marc Zumoff will do play-by-play, with former Wing Dennis Townsend on color. First away game is Saturday at Washington.... Prism will broadcast the team's four home games one day late. Prism's Larry Rosen will do play-by-play; Penn lacrosse coach Tony Seaman, the color. First broadcast is Jan. 17.

Sunday, January 10, 1988

The Washington Wave scored a 14-13 overtime victory over the Philadelphia Wings in a pro box lacrosse game yesterday at the Capital Centre, in Landover, Md.

It was the season opener for both teams, as the Eagle Pro Box Lacrosse League began its second year.

Pat O'Conner scored three goals for the Wave, while Gary Martin had three for the Wings.

With the Wings ahead, 13-12, Mark Gold scored a goal with 1 minute and 15 seconds left in regulation to force the overtime.

Kirk Thurston then scored his only goal of the game 2:33 into the overtime to give the Wave the victory.

The Wings will play the Wave again on Saturday, at the Spectrum

Friday, January 15, 1988

By LES BOWEN, Daily News Sports Writer

If Philadelphia Wings coach Dave Evans were to announce a theme for his practices this week, it would be something along the lines of "Saving Face on Faceoffs."

The Wings play their home opener tomorrow night at 8 at the Spectrum against the Washington Wave. The Wave defeated the Wings, 14-13 in overtime, last Saturday in Landover, Md., in the Major Indoor Lacrosse League season opener for both teams. The big problem, Evans said yesterday, was faceoffs.

"We were something like 9-for-31 on faceoffs," Evans said. "And it wasn't the fault of the guys taking the draws. The guys on the line just weren't picking up loose balls."

Evans said the Wings have worked a lot this week on eliminating that problem, and hope to pick up 50 percent of tomorrow night's faceoffs. John Tucker, who won several draws in the second half last week, will get more work in that capacity, Evans said. He said Tucker did especially well in a couple of encounters with the Waves' top faceoff man, Mark Gold.

Another problem for the Wings last week was transition. Evans said he felt like the small playing surface at the team's Edgewood, Md., practice site made the team slow to adjust to the larger Capital Centre floor.

"It was our first game on the big floor, and it showed," he said. "I just spent about five hours watching tape of the game, and we were really slow coming out of our end."

But not everything the first-year coach saw displeased him. Evans said the Wings' defense was solid, and he was impressed by a fourth-quarter run in which the Wings came back from a 12-7 deficit to lead, 13-12, before Washington scored the final two goals. Evans said feisty 5-6 wing John

Conley hit a post with an overtime shot that could have won the game.

WING TIPS: Apparently, Wings general manager Mike French was being wildly optimistic last week when he said the Wings were close to a sellout for their home opener. Spectrum spokeswoman Carole Jarden-Morganti said yesterday that about 5,000 tickets have been sold. She said that this year's base of 2,000 season ticketholders, however, is slightly larger than last year's. Coach Dave Evans was particularly impressed with the play of Gary Martin, a first-year player who scored three goals last week and showed a lot of hustle... Evans said playing at the Spectrum might not provide all that much of a boost to the Wings because several of them live in the Baltimore area.

Saturday, January 16, 1988

By Dave Caldwell, Inquirer Staff Writer

They are part Pavarotti and part Van Halen, part Cyndi Lauper and part Tammy Wynette.

They are the Philadelphia Wings, the one-year-old professional indoor lacrosse team that is to play the Washington Wave at 8 p.m. today in the first of four Major Indoor Lacrosse League regular-season games scheduled for the Spectrum.

And even they are surprised at their widespread popularity.

"We've got a bit of everything at our games," said Mike French, a former Wings player who is now the team's general manager. "We've got Muffy and Biffy from the Main Line, the parents of kids who went to Episcopal Academy. . . . We've got the WWF (World Wrestling Federation) crowd. And the tractor- pull crowd. And the hockey crowd."

Although the Wings have a new coach (former Canadian women's coach Dave Evans), and although the league has a tamer approach (rules have been strengthened to curb blatant open-field cheap shots), the Wings hope to remain a hot ticket in this competitive sports market.

"Last year, it was almost like roller derby - almost anything goes," said Evans, whose team opened the season last Saturday with a 14-13 overtime loss to the Wave in Landover, Md. "It seemed like the rules changed from quarter to quarter, from game to game."

Apparently, fans have not been repelled by the MILL's de-emphasis on mirth and mayhem. Chris Fritz, the president of the MILL and one of the league's founders, said that between 12,000 and 14,000 fans are expected for today's Wings-Wave game.

That is a significant crowd for a contest between athletes whose salaries are nowhere near the Michael Jordan stratosphere: Indoor lacrosse players are to earn a modest $150 for each game - up from $100 per game last season.

"We have the Herschel Walkers of the sport, the Doug Fluties," Fritz said earlier this week from the league office in Kansas City. "And the great luxury of indoor lacrosse is that we can afford these superstars.

"When you see these guys put out, it's like a fairy tale. Nobody puts out this much for the money. Except Olympians, maybe."

Philadelphia sports fans seemed to appreciate how much the Wings put out last season, even though they finished 3-3 and were ousted in the first round of the league playoffs.

The Wings' average home attendance of 11,415 last season was the best in the four-team league - more than 3,500 fans better than Washington's average and almost 5,000 more than the league champion Baltimore Thunder or the New Jersey Saints, who had the best regular-season record in the league.

Such numbers encouraged Fritz and co-founder Russ Cline to expand the horizons of the MILL, which was known last season as the Eagle League. Fritz said that MILL games will be televised by stations in 14 markets, substantially up from two markets (Philadelphia and Washington) last season.

And Fritz said that two or three teams could be added to the league next season. But the MILL does not want to expand too quickly, as the now-comatose USFL did.

"This is what we anticipated," Fritz said. "We didn't want to go out and lose money. So many leagues go under. Or they don't understand why they lost $1 million in a year."

As they were last year, the Wings truly are an Everyman team, which is another way of saying that their roster is filled with players who are unknown outside the lacrosse world.

Last year's top scorer, John Tucker, returns to the team, as does Philadelphia resident Paul French, Mike's brother and the team's second- leading scorer last season.

Evans and French feel that they have assembled a team that will look more to run than to stun.

But the Wings will not be afraid to level a few bone-crushing hits, either. Just like the old days.

"We've replaced a lot of our players with some real good athletes," French said. "You've got to remember that a lot of our players went to places like Yale or Virginia and played outdoor lacrosse.

"They're not used to the Broad Street Bullies. But most people think there's still plenty of hitting. Lots of hitting."

Thursday, January 21, 1988

 By Dave Caldwell

 They quit when the sands of time suddenly slip through their once-nimble fingers.

 Or they quit when they realize that they no longer can outwit or outhit opponents who are blessed with abundant talent.

 Or they quit when their once-limber bodies contain as much stitchwork as an Amish quilt.

 Professional athletes usually do not quit because their full-time jobs outside sports suddenly become too much to handle. That probably is because professional athletes usually do not have full-time jobs outside sports.

 But J. R. Castle does. And today, Castle is a retired professional athlete because his job, his athletic career, his marriage and his two children simply became too much of a juggling act.

 "I can't pull four strings at one time," he said last week.

 J. R. Castle, 29, of Wyndmoor, never was a typical play-for-pay jock. For one season, Castle played professional indoor lacrosse for the Philadelphia Wings, a team in the fledgling Eagle League.

 The Eagle League - which has been rechristened the Major Indoor Lacrosse League (MILL) this season - is not your typical play-for-pay league, either. Last season, Eagle League players earned the unprincely sum of $100 per game. (The MILL decided during the off-season to grant the players a generous 50 percent salary increase, all the way to $150 per game.)

 Castle, a former all-East Coast Conference midfielder at Drexel University, was not exactly the star attraction of last year's Wings. During the season, he logged more penalties (5) than goals (2) or assists (1).

 But Castle, the husband of Leah and the father of young sons George and J. R. 3d, enjoyed playing pro lacrosse.

 Lacrosse was his first love. And there was a bizarre, Walter Mitty-type thrill to playing lacrosse for money before crowds that numbered between 6,000 and 15,000.

 "I played the sport before - but never for money," said Castle, a Penn Charter graduate who was the fourth-oldest player on the Wings last year. ''No. 1, there was the thrill of playing for the re-creation of the Wings" who played in the National Lacrosse League in the mid-1970s. "And I was being paid for the sport. There was never any money in it - it was not that the money was glamorous or anything.

 "No. 2 was getting in front of a large group of people and playing the sport. It was a George Plimpton type of thing."

 It also was an exhausting type of thing.

 "It was just too tiring for him - he couldn't do it," Leah Castle said. ''I would have liked to have seen him do it. We loved going to the games. But there are more important things in life."

 Such as Wall Street, for instance.

 Castle works as a salesman for Mackenzie Financial, a Canadian brokerage business. He is assigned to cover a large territory - from Erie to Bethesda, Md. - and has come to know the roads in that region as well as the American Automobile Association.

 When the stock market took its dramatic nose dive Oct. 19, Castle became a very busy businessman. "As my business began to react the way it did," he said, "it required a lot more time of me to service my accounts."

 So there was less time for activities such as lacrosse. Since most of the Wings live in the Baltimore area, the team's preseason practices were held at a health club in Edgewood, Md. - a 1 1/2-hour drive from Philadelphia. And the team practices were scheduled for 9 p.m.

 "And as you can imagine, whenever you play the game, you get pretty worked up," Castle said. "So it would take almost two hours to get home, and then it would take two hours to wind down after whacking each other with sticks and all of that."

 And J. R. Castle 3d, who was born last February, demanded plenty of attention from his father - sometimes while his father was in the middle of a dead sleep.

 "He's 11 months old now, but he's still getting up at 4 in the morning," Castle said with a laugh. "You always hear stories, 'Well, my kid sleeps right through the night.' That's not true with this kid."

 Such obligations notwithstanding, Castle probably would have made the Wings this season. "But we had to cut down to 25 guys," Wings' coach Dave Evans said, "and at the time we were thinking about who we would keep, J. R. had made only one practice. It was right at the time the stock market was going crazy. It was unfortunate, really."

 Castle, Evans and general manager Mike French - a teammate of Castle's last season - decided that it would be better for the team if Castle yielded his roster spot to a younger player with more free time.

 "I'm not happy he had to drop off," French said. "It was unfortunate that he couldn't make the commitment."

 "It was probably one of the hardest decisions I've ever made in my life," Castle said. "Ask my wife. She can't believe I'm still playing now."

 Castle has joined the Masters Lacrosse Club, an amateur circuit that plays most of its games in the Main Line area. The competition may not be as fierce as it was in the pro league, but it still is a chance for Castle to play the game he loves.

 And he says that he remains on the Wings' loosely organized injured reserve list. 

"I'm nowhere near the caliber of player that some of the younger players are," Castle said of the Wings. "But at least I got to go out this way. That's better than going out the other way."

 He is happy that he did not end his short-lived career by getting seriously injured - or by being embarrassed. But J. R. Castle got to live out his fantasy.

 And like a fantasy, his professional career ended quickly and sweetly.

 "Except I wished I was back in my early 20s again," he said. "It came 10 years too late."

 Better late than never, J. R.

Thursday, January 28, 1988

 By LES BOWEN, Daily News Sports Writer

 Philadelphia Wings coach Dave Evans doesn't want to put undue pressure on his 0-2 Major Indoor Lacrosse League team. But the season, after all, consists of just eight games. And Saturday's 8 p.m. Spectrum matchup against the Baltimore Thunder is game No. 3. And the Wings don't yet have win No. 1.

 "A loss Saturday is not the end of the world," Evans said. "But as they say, you can see it from there . . . This is a must game. We can't let ourselves get behind the eight ball."

 Maybe the Wings will get a boost from playing a team that isn't the Washington Wave, which accounted for both of those losses so far, 14-13 and 10-9.

 "I'm not happy with our record," Evans said. "But all in all, I'm not disappointed. Both losses were by one goal; we could have won very easily."

 Evans was disappointed enough to deliver a spirited lecture after the second loss, Jan. 16 at the Spectrum in front of 13,814 fans. Evans said he didn't like the way his team was outhustled for groundballs, or the team's penchant for turnovers. And he thought there was at least a possibility that the Wings got carried away on the emotion supplied by their zealous fans.

 "I was quite pleased with the crowd," he said, "but sometimes they cheered at the wrong things. They would get excited over the big hits, and we took some boneheaded penalties near the end of the game."

 Evans said that in both games, the Wings tended to try to rush back on offense before actually securing the rebound of a missed shot - a failing that led to several easy rebound goals. He said they can't afford to do that against 1-2 Baltimore, which defeated Washington last weekend.

 "They (the Thunder) shoot an awful lot," he said. "They shoot from all over the place, then rush in for the rebound. It's almost like a serve-and- volley game in tennis. We've got to put pressure on the ballcarrier, force them to pass it more."

 WING TIPS: Among the brightest spots for the Wings thus far has been the play of goalie Vinnie Pfeifer, who had 45 saves in the last game. Dave Evans has been studying ways to get Pfeifer more offensive help. Currently, one of the Wings' three lines - J.C. Conley, Mark DeCicco, Pat Lamon, Gary Martin and Scott Carruthers - has accounted for a disproportionate share of the scoring.

Sunday, January 31, 1988

 By Dave Caldwell, Inquirer Staff Writer

 The works of such rock groups as Genesis and Van Halen were blasted over the Spectrum's sound system every time the Philadelphia Wings controlled the ball during last night's Major Indoor Lacrosse League game against Baltimore.

 John Philip Sousa would have been much more appropriate. The Wings stayed composed during an early Thunder storm, orchestrated a dramatic second-period comeback, then drummed in five unanswered second-half goals en route to a stirring 12-7 triumph.

 "It was a great time out there," said Pat Lamon, who set an MILL record with six goals, including two in eight seconds in the Wings' second-period surge. "There was a great crowd. You couldn't ask for anything more."

 A league-record crowd of 16,038 watched the Wings rally to score their first victory of the season against two losses. The raucous fans even staged a major-league wave.

 "When they started doing the wave, I said to myself, 'Let's not get too wrapped up in this,' " Wings coach Dave Evans said with a smile.

 It was a good thing for the Wings that the officials had to stop play twice in the first quarter so that the Spectrum maintenance crew could reglue the artificial-turf playing surface to the ice beneath. The Wings were outscored by 6-2 in the period and were outplayed so badly that the fans booed their sloppy, choppy performance.

 Baltimore punched in three goals in the first three minutes, including a bizarre one by Chuck Muir only 1 minute, 6 seconds into the game. Muir lugged the ball behind the Philadelphia goal, then bounced a shot off the back of goalie Vinnie Pfeifer. Before a befuddled Pfeifer knew what had hit him, the ball dribbled into the net.

 Later in the period, after John Conley's goal sliced Baltimore's lead to 3-2, the Thunder pumped in three straight scores.

 "The things we talked about before the game, we just didn't do," Evans said. "The main thing was that we just weren't putting the pressure on in any facet of the game."

 When Dick Grieves whipped in a goal with 8:04 left in the half, the Wings had ended an 11-minute, 25-second scoring drought. That is an eternity in an offense-happy league in which an average of 28 goals a game has been scored this season.

 Grieves' goal stirred the Wings. Fifty-two seconds later, Dave Tasker flipped a shot past Thunder goalie Tom Manos to get the Wings within 6-4.

 Lamon then took the wheel of the turbocharged Wings' offense. Just 11 seconds after Tasker's goal, Lamon whisked a shot past Manos to make it 6-5. Eight seconds after that, he pried the ball away from a Baltimore defender at midfield, then scored on a breakaway to tie the game.

 "I think that was a real boost for us," Lamon said. "Here we are, down by one. Thirty seconds ago, we were down by four."

 Only 17 seconds after the Thunder seized the lead again on Butch Marino's goal, Lamon scored on a rare penalty shot to retie the score. Just like that.

 In the third period, Lamon gave the Wings the lead for good. Grieves and Tasker scored later in the period to make the score 10-7. Lamon completed his big night with two fourth-period goals, and the Wings, with Pfeifer continuing to frustrate Baltimore, had their five-goal margin of victory.

 "I think we finally put together all we've been talking about," Pfeifer said. "This was the third game of the season. Talk is over with now."

Friday, February 5, 1988

 By LES BOWEN, Daily News Sports Writer

 Vinnie Pfeifer believes he saw the Philadelphia Wings come together last Saturday night at the Spectrum, in front of 16,038 screaming fans.

 The Wings, winless in their first two Major Indoor Lacrosse League games of 1988, were down four goals early in the third game of their eight-game regular season. Then, suddenly, things started clicking. Pat Lamon scored six goals, including two in eight seconds in the second period. The Wings breezed to a 12-7 victory over the Baltimore Thunder.

 "It was the culmination of all our efforts to date," Pfeifer, the Wings' goalie, said this week. "It was a united effort."

 The week before, coach Dave Evans had said the vocal Spectrum crowd might have gotten his team too fired up, resulting in silly penalties that contributed to a one-goal loss to Washington. But this time, Pfeifer said, the crowd had an opposite effect.

 "They were our seventh player on the field," Pfeifer said. "They influence the opponent dramatically."

 More than any of the Wings, Pfeifer understands how much the team will need its new-found cohesiveness and its big, loud crowd tomorrow afternoon (1 p.m.) at the Spectrum against the first-place New Jersey Saints (3-1). Pfeifer was the Saints' goalie last season, then asked to be put back into the MILL draft when plans for graduate school at Loyola (Md.) made playing for the North Jersey-based Saints impractical. The Wings, looking for goaltending help, promptly snapped him up.

 Pfeifer said the Saints "have to be respected as the best team in the league . . . All of their players are from the New York area, most from the Long Island area (as is Pfeifer). They've played together quite a bit, on one team or another. They have a lot of seasons under their belts."

 Evans called New Jersey "the fastest team in the league," and Pfeifer agreed.

 "They're a very good one-on-one team, very fast, excellent with the sticks. It'll be a test of our endurance for four quarters," Pfeifer said.

 Evans will need a strong effort from Pfeifer, but he said that hasn't been a concern this season. The Wings have been up and down, offensively and defensively, but Pfeifer has been consistently excellent, Evans said.

 Pfeifer, 27, played collegiately at Loyola, then played club-level lacrosse while working in real estate in the New York area. He decided to return to Loyola for an MBA, and while he is there, he is serving as head cross country coach, assistant lacrosse coach, and strength and fitness aide. This makes for a busy week, but he said he has no trouble staying in shape.

 "I lift six or seven days a week, and I run with the cross country and indoor track teams," he said.

 Pfeifer's biggest test this year with the Wings was more emotional than physical, as he suffered through the two season-opening losses, each by one goal.

 "Your best goalies take it (losing) directly to heart," he said. "We had to go through a lot of changes (integrating new personnel and a new coach, from last season). Now, those changes have been ironed out."

 WING TIPS: Winger Paul French, who missed last week's game with a shoulder separation, is questionable for this week . . . Pat Lamon's record six-goal game gave him the team scoring lead, with 11 goals and one assist. J.C. Conley is second, with five goals and three assists.

Monday, February 15, 1988

 The Washington Wave defeated the Philadelphia Wings, 13-12, in overtime in a pro box lacrosse game last night at the Capital Centre.

 The Wave improved its record to 5-2, while the Wings fell to 1-5. 

Mark Gold led the Wave with four goals. 

The Wings were paced by Pat Lamon, who had three goals and three assists.

 Scott Carruthers of the Wings scored a goal with 1 minute, 34 seconds left in regulation to tie the score, 12-12, and force the overtime.

Friday, February 26, 1988

 BY LES BOWEN

 The way Dave Evans sees it, if the Philadelphia Wings somehow could get a lump-sum payment containing all the luck they didn't enjoy in compiling a 2-5 record, they would shoot right past the host Baltimore Thunder in tomorrow's regular-season finale and right into the Major Indoor Lacrosse League playoffs.

 If the Wings lose, Baltimore advances to the playoffs.

 "We've had no luck," said Evans, the Wings' coach. "Realistically, we could easily be 5-2 now. It's frustrating."

 But Evans and the Wings aren't sitting around replaying the tapes of their three one-goal losses to the Washington Wave. Instead, they are focusing on beating the Thunder so they can get into the playoffs, where they probably will play . . . the Washington Wave.

 This might not seem like all that appealing a notion to most people, but the Wings really do believe in luck - that luck was the difference against Washington, all three times.

 "It's not that difficult from a psychological standpoint, because we believe we could have won all those games," Evans said. "Two of them went into overtime, and the other was our first home game, in which we played really poorly . . . Our offense is much better now."

 But to get that final rematch down in Landover, Md., next week, the Wings have to stop Baltimore. They have confidence in their ability to do that, since their only two victories of the season have come at the Thunder's expense, 12-7 and 14-3.

 "We have to stay out of the penalty box and get good matchups on their big men - they have good outside shooters," Evans said.

Sunday, February 28, 1988

 The Philadelphia Wings advanced to the Major Indoor Lacrosse League playoffs yesterday, beating the Baltimore Thunder, 17-9, before a crowd of 5,006.

 The Wings (3-5), who finished the regular season third in the four-team league, will be involved in a one-game playoff against the second-place team - either the Washington Wave or the New Jersey Saints - next Sunday.

 Washington and New Jersey will meet in a regular-season finale today, with the winner finishing first. The Wings will face the loser on the road.

 The Wings went on top by 2-0 in the first three minutes yesterday, getting goals from John Tucker and Paul French.

 After Baltimore's Mark Hahn cut the margin to 2-1, French, Lou Delligatti and Gary Martin scored to extend the Wings' lead to 5-1, and Philadelphia was not threatened after that.

 French finished with five goals and one assist, Dave Tasker added three goals and an assist, and Tucker, Delligatti, Martin and Pat Lamon each scored two goals.

 One of Baltimore's goals was a gift from Wings goalie Kevin Bilger. Bilger made a save on Rutger Colt, but the ball fell out of his stick and into the net. Colt was credited with the goal.

 Bilger wound up with 31 saves.