My esteemed field hockey colleague Kat Cornetta posted an interesting timeline on social media today. The thread mentions a number of incidents that have occurred this season surrounding the boys’ lacrosse team at Ipswich, Mass., a town of about 13,000 located about an hours’ drive northeast of Boston.
Now, we normally don’t do a lot of boys’ and men’s lacrosse on this site. But we’re laying out what has happened to the team and its season this year as a cautionary tale for what could happen in any town in the U.S., to any school district, and any team that plays interscholastic sport.
March 17: In a preseason scrimmage, a player was injured after a collision, with a broken forearm. The trainer for the team was not at the game, and a former student-athlete at the school with lifeguard training volunteered to administer first aid.
According to the player’s mother, there were further complications. “But that whole day was a hot mess,” she tols The Ipswich Local News. “Not only was the trainer not there, the gates to the field were locked and the ambulance couldn’t get in. There was such confusion.”
The player had to be transported to MassGeneral Hospital in Boston, where surgeons had to use metal plates and 11 screws in his arm to repair the fractures.
In addition to the injury, another Ipswich player suffered a concussion in pregame warmups that was later confirmed through testing at hospital.
April 9: Through further reporting, it was revealed that there was no automated external defibrillator (AED) avalable at the field, and the device, which is often critical because of the instances of commotio cordis that have happened from time to time in contact sports, had not been in its place for a number of months.
According to reporting by the Local News, Kelley Michael, the athletic trainer who was missing from the lacrosse game left her position after 11 years.
“The preparation and protocols I have curated for all venues in my absence fell apart,” Michael said in an email announcing her departure. “I am not the only person responsible for the students’ well being.”
June 5: After Ipswich earned the fourth seed in the MIAA Division 4 state tournament, the team would advance through to the quarterfinal round, where they would play Winthrop (Mass.). In a tense, taut 4-5 game, Ipswich and Winthrop would engage in a brawl, one which saw a number of players ejected.
June 7: Ipswich High School holds its graduation ceremony. Sometime that day, eight of the lacrosse players were photographed while holding what looked like cigars. The photos were posted on social media.
June 8: The photo was reported to school authorities. According to reporting, there was a sizable amount of damage control, including an assertion that the cigars in the photograph were not real. This is an issue because of a rule in the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association called the Chemical Health Rule.
The regulation forbids Massachusetts scholastic athletes from consuming, possessing, buying, selling, or giving away alcohol, tobacco (including.e-cigarettes), marijuana, steroids, or controlled dangerous substances from the start of practice through the end of the academic year.
According to reporting, the school principal, Jonathan Mitchell, had originally informed the players and their parents that they would be allowed to participate in its next game, a semifinal against top-seeded Cohasett (Mass.) in a game which would be played in Scituate, Mass.
Parenthetically, the choice of the semifinal site had been a source of controversy because the site is a mere four miles from Cohasett, but more than an hour’s drive from Ipswich.
June 9: Four hours before the game, and just when the Ipswich boys were to get on the bus, a final decision came down, reportedly from athletic director Tom Gallagher and superintendant Brian Blake, that the eight players had violated the Chemical Health Rule, and were ineligible. The eight suspensions meant that not enough players could participate in the game, so the team was obligated to forfeit the game, just one game away from playing for the state championship.
I have seen a number of situations like this in the last few years.
One time, a state tournament run by a field hockey team in Delaware was torpedoed by the use of an ineligible players. Another time, a team was getting on the bus when state troopers removed players from the bus for being part of a drug ring. The remaining team members took the eventual state champions into overtime, only to fall. I have also seen times when athletic directors for city schools fail to provide even basic transportation for the student-athletes playing for school pride.
But the 2026 Ipswich boys’ lacrosse season reads like a soap opera. And, to me, there is a certain amount of dysfunction surrounding the administration of the school.
Regrettably, this leaves a team, playing The Creator’s Game, on the sideline when it could have been playing for a place in history.