‘Really old guys’ take the field as Vail Lacrosse Shootout kicks off its 51st year

The 51st annual Vail Lacrosse Shootout started over the weekend with the Zenmasters (60+), Grandmasters (50+), and Supermasters (40+) divisions.

Starting each day at 8 in the morning, teams in the Zenmasters division looked years younger than your average 60-somethings. Each of the three games on Sunday in the tournament’s oldest division ended in decisive victories for the Silverbacks, Los Abuelos de Tejas, and Middlebury. The Zenmasters final will take place at 8 a.m. on Monday, featuring the Silverbacks and Los Abuelos de Tejas. The other four teams in the division will play again as well, at the same time.

In the Supermasters division, Middlebury — made up of alums from the Vermont college — played two games back-to-back, crushing the competition on Sunday afternoon. Westfax/Pit Viper, a team named for its brewing and sunglasses company sponsors, lost to Middlebury on Sunday but will get a rematch in Monday’s final at 12:30 p.m. The Silver Oysters, last year’s Supermasters champions, will play the Red Buffalo for third at the same time.

The team to watch in the Grandmasters division is Team 41, out of Atlanta. Named for friend Hal Whiteman, who passed away in February, and who wore No. 41, this team is a conglomerate of a division of teams in Atlanta from a league called “Old Guy Lacrosse.”

“The Old Guy Lacrosse League is a league in Atlanta; you have to be 35 and up. Any given year, we can have eight to 10 teams of guys 35 and up,” said Rav Rampersaud, who was wearing a hat with the league’s logo. Of the 20-strong roster that Team 41 brought to the Vail Lacrosse Shootout, Rampersaud explained: “We’re all friends, but we play on separate home teams.” 

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The league, which was founded in 2012, and was, for a time, known as the “Really Old Guys League,” has a motto of “Play, Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation, Medication, Repeat” on its website, but the Supermasters players showed no sign of exhaustion on Sunday afternoon. Though they claimed to have experienced difficulty with the altitude in the past, Team 41 had no problem dispatching with their opponents Saturday and Sunday, and will face the also formidable Generals in the championship game at 9:30 am on Monday.

On the attack, Dan Kesselring is ruthless, scoring 14 out of the team’s 19 goals in the tournament so far. Kesselring was a four-time All-American in college, and has coached his public high school team to the championships 12 times in the past 12 years he has been their coach, which they won six times. Lacrosse holds enormous meaning for him, and he keeps it a central part of his life. “I own a construction company, but I do coach full-time, too,” Dan Kesselring said.

While most of the players on Team 41 have been involved with lacrosse since they were teenagers or younger — many cited being pulled into the sport by a friend in middle or high school and never letting it go— that was not the case for Bill Hyden.

“My son started playing, and I started playing after that,” Hyden said. “I didn’t pick it up until I was 41.” Though he played other sports throughout his life, lacrosse is now the only one that remains.

What’s clear from watching the annual lacrosse shootout up close is how much the players of Team 41 and all the other teams who head to Vail each summer love the game. When asked what they do other than lacrosse, all four Team 41 players responded with some variation of, “I coach.”

With some prying, it turned out that they also have full-time, non-lacrosse jobs.

“I’m in IT, he’s in banking, he’s an entrepreneur, he’s a coach and builder, so all over the board,” said Hyden, pointing to some of his teammates. But for each man, lacrosse is clearly in the forefront of his mind.

Many of Team 41’s players are not from Atlanta and feel in their coaching a responsibility to bring the sport of lacrosse to young players in Georgia.

“We give back a lot to Atlanta, because there’s not a lot of lacrosse knowledge in Atlanta, so the guys who play and have lived up north and come down, we try to give back as much as we can,” Kesselring said. 

Lacrosse is so important to Team 41 because it means more than the sport itself.

“Sixteen out of 20 are from Atlanta, and we’ve played with a gentleman named Hal Whiteman for the last 15, 20 years. He passed away this last February, so we’re playing in his honor. That’s why we’re Team 41 out of Atlanta, Georgia,” said Greg Haas, the man the others introduced as the one in charge. Whiteman, who was a player and coach in Atlanta, and served as a teammate of some of the players on other teams at this weekend’s tournament, brings extra motivation to Team 41’s game.