PHILADELPHIA – There probably were some encouraging words and speeches delivered and a few adjustments to the gameplan made while the Adelphi men’s lacrosse team simmered in its locker room at halftime. But that’s not what anyone will remember from the intermission of Sunday’s Division II national championship game at Lincoln Financial Field. Rather they’ll recall the feeling when they came back out on the field and saw that the skies had opened up and rain was falling.
“We eat that up,” Adelphi coach Gordon Purdie said of embracing the rain. “We took it as a true sign that the game would be ours.” See, so many of Adelphi’s games and practices this season had been impacted, delayed, and even postposed because of bad weather.
It got to the point that the Panthers embraced the downpours and even gave themselves a meteorological moniker befitting their inclement inclinations: the Rain Dogs. Now they can call themselves something else: Best in Show. Top-seeded Adelphi roared back from a deficit that was as large as four goals early in the third quarter to beat Lenoir-Rhyne, 12-10, and brought the championship trophy up the Jersey Turnpike and back to Garden City for the first time since 2001 – before many of the current players were even born -- later Sunday night.
“There’s no feeling like this in the world,” said Brian Harinski, the senior midfielder from Massapequa who scored four goals, all in the second half, and was named the tournament’s Most O.