Local Players Featured in ESPN All-American Lacrosse Showcase

Local lacrosse stars Lindsay Toppe and Casey Bocklet recently went against 80 of the best high school girls lacrosse players in the country at the 2011 Champion All-American Showcase at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Lake Buena Vista, FL.

Four teams—Team Liberty, Team Pride, Team Spirit and Team Freedom—competed in a four-game, three-day event July 17-19.

For all players in attendance it was a chance to hone their skills against the best players nationwide and for some, like Fox Lane graduate Lindsay Toppe, it was a time to bond with a future teammate.

That teammate is Christine Ferguson, a Weston, MA, native who will be playing the sport at Cornell University alongside Toppe. At the showcase, Ferguson was named MVP of Team Freedom, of which both future Cornell players were members.

“We definitely had a lot of bonding time between being on the field and going to Disney riding the rides—we got to know each other more,” Toppe said. “I really like her as a person. She really is nice to hang out with.”

Toppe, who plays attack, was happy for Ferguson that she got Team Freedom’s MVP award and said that on the field Ferguson was an "extremely hard worker who goes all out and never gives up."

Bocklet, a John Jay graduate headed for Northwestern University, could be similarly described—just on the other side of the field playing attack.

She registered four goals and three assists to lead Team Spirit to a 17-16 triumph against the Team Freedom squad in the championship game. That game—the finale of the showcase—was played in intense heat.

"It got up to the mid 90s,” Bocklet said. “Luckily it was on a grass field instead of a turf field where it could have been 110 degrees. It was definitely hot. Once you weren’t playing you were hiding under the tent, trying to get near the big fan.”

While the conditions weren’t ideal, Toppe thought they caught a break considering what the weather was back home.

“Actually, we got lucky because when we went down to Florida, we had low 90s—and in New York it was higher,” Toppe said. “We definitely hydrated all the time. We had 20 players on the team and our coaches did a good job of subbing us so we didn’t get heat exhaustion.”

Bocklet turned in a top-notch performance despite the weather and the competition. When asked what was going through her head, Bocklet said she was just concentrating on trying her best.  

“I was just thinking that I have to give 110 percent and just play non-stop,” Bocklet said. “Every player on the field seemed amazing so I just wanted to try my best, try my hardest so I could compete at that level.”

Toppe, a former cross-town rival, watched Bocklet in amazement. But it wasn’t just the scoring that she was most impressed with.

“Casey really did a good of working well with her teammates and finding the open man, not only just scoring herself,” Toppe said. “She did a tremendous job getting the ball to her teammates.”

Bocklet said her takeaway was a sense of confidence, knowing that she could hold her own against the best in the country.

That type of confidence can only help her when she competes at Northwestern, which has won six of the last seven women’s NCAA lacrosse championships.

Fox Lane senior Sammy Jo Tracy, who is already committed to the University of North Carolina, also played on the Team Spirit team but retired five minutes into her firtst game from a hamstring injury.