Men’s Lacrosse from Japan #3 – Two Games in Tokyo from Steve Settembrino

The UMBC men’s lacrosse team is in Japan for the 20th annual International Friendship Games as part of an 11-day journey to Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan. Some of the members of the squad will be sharing their experiences here at the Dawg Blog. Our third entry is from Steve Settembrino.

June 16, 2009

Konnichiwa!

Today we played lacrosse at Keio University.  We ended up playing Keio and Tokyo University.  The seniors ended up being fans during this game so Coach Zimmerman (“Zimmermamma”) could evaluate talent for next year.  We played well and won by a good margin.  After the game we got together to trade gear and the players were asking us for tips, especially on face-offs with Matt “The Clamp” Curtin.  MVP of the first game went to Jamie “No Sleep” Kimbles, he looked like a man on a mission on the field.  The next game against Tokyo, besides the seniors acting like little kids on the sidelines, the UMBC team played well again and won by a nice margin.  MVP of the whole day of lacrosse went to Brian “OBS” Schneider.  He was not the most rested of the bunch, but he delivered some crushing checks and displayed some amazing stick handling.

For dinner we took the subway to meet up with Keio University at a Korean BBQ.  With us and Keio there were at least 100 people at this huge restaurant.  The food selection was insane, for $30 you had a choice of any type of meat imaginable including tongue, squid, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, sushi and many others which I had no idea what they were. 

The Keio team and us shared several great laughs and at the end we toasted the Japanese about being great hosts to us so far in Tokyo.  We ended up going out that night with the Keio team. 

Now tomorrow is a travel day and we are going to Nagoya on the bullet train to go to the Toyota plant and meet our host families.

Steve Settembrino