After snow had canceled Saturday's game at Goucher, Washington College could have sat back and waited until this Saturday against No. 14-ranked Washington & Lee to open the season.
But after a discussion with York coach Brandon Childs, coach Jeff Shirk agreed to have his No. 4 Shoremen travel and meet the No. 10 Spartans on their home field on Wednesday. The result was a 9-8 overtime loss for Washington College after York senior attackman Tyler Hutson (Winters Mill) converted a pass from freshman attackman Dillon Hannah (Catonsville) just 28 seconds into the extra session.
As much as the loss stings, Shirk said he thinks the outcome will help his young group.
"It's a big-time game and the more you get into the season, the bigger the games are," he said Thursday morning. "There's definitely a lot of pressure with yesterday, which I think will help our guys now that they've experienced it. The guys were talking about it on the bus ride home, and we're going to talk about it today. It's more beneficial to play in meaningful games than to play games that you can walk away and makes mistakes and still win. I think the guys learned a big lesson yesterday that we've got to limit our mistakes and we've got to take advantage of more opportunities in those big games or it's going to cost us."
Shirk said he had no regrets about agreeing to play York instead of adding a less strenuous opponent. "That's what scrimmages are for," he said. "We got a scrimmage [against Virginia Wesleyan on Feb. 14], and that's supposed to get us ready to go. No regrets at all about yesterday's game. Hopefully in a few months here, we're looking back on the season and this will have been a huge positive even though it was a loss."
The challenge now is turning around and preparing for another top 15 foe in the Generals (2-1). And that's fine with Shirk.
"If you want to be one of the top teams in the country and you really actually want to compete at that level, you've got to be willing to play and compete against anybody," he said. "If you're good enough to get to [NCAA] tournament time, that's how the tournament plays out. You've got short rest and very good opponents. I think it's a good experience for the guys to have this and hopefully, it pays dividends at the end of the season. But I thought it was a really good opportunity to get out there and compete against a very good team and have to rebound no matter what happened to show up again against another very good team in the next game."