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PEET POILLON SCRIPT
Standup 1 Peet Poillon ranks among the best players
in the sport of lacrosse. But before he suited up for the Denver Outlaws, or won the Major
League Lacrosse Championship, he played right here in the Dragon's Lair.
SOT PEET: Howard's lacrosse program means a ton for
me. It was a stepping stone for me, and it was a smaller chapter of my life but it was
one of the most important ones.
SOT SHAWN BURKE, HOWARD CC HEAD COACH, 2003-2007 CCBC-ESSEX HEAD COACH: 2010-PRESENT
Peet's a very unorthodox player. He's got great change of direction, shoots the
ball great with both hands and it's very unpredictable; almost like a scrambling quarterback.
SOT TODD STIEGLER, HCC ASST. COACH, 2002-2009 ESSEX DIR. LACROSSE OPS., 2010-PRESENT
In a lacrosse sense, everything happens with Peet when you're not expecting it. He releases
the ball. He cuts. He dodges. All kind of not in the rhythmic time that you're used
to seein'.
SOT: MIKE JONES, HCC ASST. COACH, 2000-2007 HCC HEAD COACH, 2007-2011
Peet is an old-school, all-around player. Fantastic work ethic. You know, his work ethic
has gotten him where he is today.
SOT: TODD HOLMES, FORMER HCC TEAMMATE He was on SportsCenter. We used to joke around
like "C,mon, man. You gotta step your game up a little bit. You're not on Top Ten yet."
VO 1 Despite scoring a league record 410 points
at Seneca Valley High School, Peet didn't receive attention from Division-1 Lacrosse
Programs.
SOT: PEET Well, your junior or senior year of high school,
you see that you're not getting recruited and not getting a whole lot of interest, so
the options started to get limited. Uh, so I started contacting a number of the junior
college schools.
SOT: STIEGLER So, when Peet contacted us, we were the most
aggressive. We were the ones who went after him the most. We drove to Pittsburgh and went
and saw him play. You know, he was so dominant in that game, you know, we were crossing our
fingers at that point, walking off the field, saying goodbye to his parents, and Peet came
walking over and said, "By the way, I just wanted to let you know I decided I'm coming
to Howard.
SOT: PEET I came back down here, saw the school. It's
obviously not a typical community college. I think it's very nice. They run it like
a four-year, you know, institution and it just kind of felt right. And, you know, when
something feels right in your gut, you just go with it.
VO 2 Peet was joining a Howard Lacrosse program
that had a clear mission.
SOT: JONES Their real goal is to make better men. Um,
we use lacrosse not only as a vehicle to be better athletes, but also to be better academically
and to be better men.
SOT: BURKE He always was the first one out at practice.
He stayed late to shoot. He was a great teammate and, um, really that rubbed off on the rest
of the team.
SOT: HOLMES Nobody wanted to be second. It just wasn't
really acceptable. And, the whole mentality of the team kind of changed. And we all took
that on with a bit of a chip on our shoulder.
SOT: PEET Whether it was spoken about or not, we all
wanted to beat Essex. We all wanted to beat Nassau. We all wanted to go to the final four.
We all wanted to win a national championship and we worked every day to accomplish those
things.
VO 3 Peet's first test as a Dragon was against
Nassau, a 20-time National Champion.
SOT: PEET I know we weren't playing our best as a
team and I was playing terrible in the first half. And Coach Burke came over to me and
gave me a slap on the helmet and said, "I need sophomore Peet. I don't need freshman
Peet." And I was a freshman, so I was like "what?"
VO 4 After a slow first half, Peet scored four
second half goals to force overtime.
SOT: STIEGLER And we're knotted up in a game. It's tied.
We go into overtime. And we have a timeout and, um, we cause a turnover in the defensive
end. And Peet picks up the ground ball and dodgesthe entire length of the field, runs
through three or four guys, gets it in the box and just let's one go. And rips it into
the corner of the net.
SOT: JONES He knew he was going to score the game-winning
goal. It was one of those things where he came off and said "let's finish this."
And he went out and scored the next goal.
SOT: HOLMES Uh, in that kind of competition, taking the
game on your shoulders and, uh, and forcing, forcing OT, then winning it like that is special.
SOT: PEET There's still pictures that I'll look
at today and see that it's just all of us running and meeting in one spot. And, just,
I think I jumped higher than I ever have in my life and, seeing Coach Burke and Coach
Stiegs hug. I think there might have been a few tears that were dropped there. And it
was a regular season game. Um, for that coaching staff it was a huge win.
SOT: STIEGLER You, uh, you realize that you've reached
a certain level, uh, when you compete with teams and programs that have been around a
long time, done a lot of winning, and now here we are competing with them, beating them.
SOT: JONES To beat a twenty-time national champion for
the first time, that was huge.
VO 5 Later in the season, Peet led Howard to another
first; a victory over Region 20 Power CCBC-Essex. Howard finished the year with a 12 and 3 record,
and a loss to Essex in the Region 20 Championship.
VO 6 Howard posted a 13 and 1 record in Peet's
sophomore year, culminating in a final showdown with CCBC-Essex for the Region 20 Championship
SOT: BURKE? What I really remember in the region final
that year, was how much Peet got the other guys on his team involved.
SOT: PEET This is the last time that we're gonna get
a shot at this team that we've been battling for, you know, the last two years.
SOT: JONES And he just went out and he knew we were gonna
win that game. So he, he had that attitude the entire game.
SOT: BURKE? I think Peet, if I remember correctly, only
had two goals in the region final but he had a bunch of assists, um, and he really helped
Alex Ashcroft, who was an All-American at the time. Alex had a big game. Jordan Koyman
had a big game for us at attack. Most of that was because of the amount of attention that
Peet, you know, that Peet drew.
The biggest compliment I could give to Peet is, you know, that guys like him play their
best in big games. And that, that was a big game and, uh, he just played outstanding;
defensively, ground balls, did all the thing that you do to help a team win a championship.
SOT: STIEGLER I'll never forget that, that little party
that we had, with just the team on the field. Everybody off to the side, waiting for us
to kind of enjoy the win as a team. And, uh, knowing that, you know, they needed to rent
a bus for us to go to New York because we were going to the final four.
VO 7 Howard lost to Nassau in the final four. Peet's
success at Howard didn't go un-noticed. The two-time NJCAA All-American transferred
to Ohio State. Peet scored 40 points as a Buckeye, and earned an honorable mention on
the NCAA All-American roster.
VO 8 After his head coach left for North Carolina,
Peet decided to come back to Maryland and attend UMBC.
SOT: PEET There's so many parallels between the nature
of that program, the nature of that school and the nature of this program, the nature
of this school. So that's, that's kind of why I liked it.
SOT: STIEGLER When Peet joined that program, they got instant,
instant credibility. They were on national television, games of the week, on Channel
2 here in Baltimore.
VO 9 UMBC won the America East Championship. Peet
led The Retrievers with 47 points, and earned Second team All-American honors. After finishing
his bachelors degree, Peet went pro.
SOT: STIEGLER I remember on draft day, you know, they had
the draft on ESPN and the thing with Peet was real quick. There was a commercial break
right after they announced his name and I'm like "Junior college kid not getting any
respect."
SOT: PEET Uh, I was drafted to the Cannons, originally,
Boston. And, uh, they wouldn't, they wouldn't fly me up to practice with them or play with
them. Um, six or seven weeks went by and I was calling Coach Day from the Boston Cannons
every day, or at least once every other day, saying "Hey, when am I gonna get a chance.
When am I gonna get a chance," and it just didn't sound like I was gonna get a chance.
SOT: STIEGLER He finally convinced them to give him his
release out of the, out of his draft pick. And the day after Boston released him he was
signed by the Bayhawks. And they were playing that Saturday night, like it was a couple
of days.
SOT: PEET I ended up playing Boston the last game of
the season and scored the game-winner with three seconds left.
VO 10 Peet scored 7 goals in two games with the
Bayhawks. In 2010, he led the team in scoring, and helped bring Chesapeake back into the
playoff picture.
SOT: PEET We had to win the last two games of the season
to get in. Um, we picked up coach Coddel from Maryland and he came in and put in a few offensive
looks for us and kind of tweaked our offense a little bit and, not necessarily what he
did but just the fact that there was a change at all, um, kind of gave the defenses that
we were playing against different looks and we finally started playing well.
VO 11 Chesapeake ended the regular season with two
wins, and a playoff victory over Boston sent the Bayhawks to the Major League
Lacrosse Championship.
SOT: STIEGLER We, uh, once they made it to the championship,
we couldn't miss that. So we made our way down there.
SOT: BURKE? So it's kind of like a family reunion. A
lot of the old Howard guys were there. And Coach Stigs and I had our Essex shirts on
and at the tailgate everyone else had their Howard stuff on. But it was great to see all
the guys come back and, um, it really reminded me how tightknit that group was.
SOT: HOLMES Having Stigs, and Burke and Jimmy Kelly and
Evan, all of us out there just watching him, supporting him, um, it was cool because, you
know, they coached him, I played with him, we're all friends with him.
VO 12 Peet finished the game with 3 goals and helped
Chesapeake win the Steinfeld Cup.
SOT: HOLMES He had the behind the back one that was really
flashy. And then he put the game out of reach with an outside rip that was headed low. And,
it was, it was fantastic. He didn't get a national championship at the college level,
so I guess he had to go an one-up it and take it to the pros before he started getting some
rings.
SOT: JONES To get one at the professional level, um,
he deserved it. He really did deserve it. And to play the role that he played, scored
the game wining goal, definitely very proud of him.
SOT: BURKE You know, just couldn't be a more perfect
end to win here in Maryland and with all his family and friend there. It was just a, just
a great day.
VO 13 Peet finished the year tied for 3rd in the
MLL with 24 goals. He also won the MLL's Most-Improved Player Award. In May
2011, The Denver Outlaws acquired Peet in a trade with Chesapeake.
SOT: PEET I feel good, I mean, we have a bunch of UMBC
guys on the team. I'm playing with Max Sebold and Brendan Mundorf, and these guys are guys
that won a gold medal with Team USA. So, uh, I feel great about playing with them, it's
a pleasure. And I'm gonna keep shooting the ball. I'm gonna keep dodging hard and
sharing the ball. But I think, just being a good teammate and working hard and trying
to lead in any way possible.
VO 14 Peet's two years at Howard helped him prepare
for his professional career.
SOT: HOLMES You know, we take a lot of pride in helping
our guys that work hard while they're with us at the junior college level get to the
next level. So, for us, it's kind of a way to look at things and say "yeah, you know,
what we did what we were supposed to do." We helped him out, um. You know, he had all
the talent in the world. He deserved to be there all along. We just kind of helped give
him the portal to get there.
SOT: PEET There are so many things that I got out of
playing for Howard that I wouldn't have gotten going to play for a four-year school.
I got to be a leader right away. I got to learn how to be a leader. I had the ball on
my stick a ton more than I would have. Uh, so it kind of helped me progress as an individual
more. Um, and the coaching was spectacular.
Standup 2 The Outlaws were eliminated by Hamilton in
the 2011 MLL Semi-finals. Peet earned a spot on the All-Star team, and will suit-up for
the Outlaws this summer. For Dragon Close-Up, I'm Madeline Smith