Spartans hope to be in mix for league title

ADAMS, New York (WWNY) - The South Jefferson boys’ lacrosse team picked up its first win of the season on the road at Carthage Tuesday night.

The Spartans are optimistic about what lies ahead in 2023.

The Spartans are a young group, with only five seniors back from a team that went 8-9 overall in 2022, 7-5 in Frontier League play, and lost in the opening round of the Section III Class D playoffs.

Spartans coach Randy Fuller says he likes the makeup of this year’s group.

“Our team is a little bit smaller,” he said. “We have 18 guys on the roster right now. A lot of those guys are back from last year. Over the past four or five days I’ve seen some real jumps and improvement in our offensive output. I think we’ve got some guys that played a lot last year as sophomores and juniors who now are a year older, a year bigger, a year wiser — have been doing a nice job.”

The Spartans return their leading scorer from last year, Ethan Hopkins, who scored 42 goals and added 19 assists.

Hopkins and his teammates feel for the team to have success this season, more players will have to step up on the offensive side of the ball and take some of the pressure off the Spartans’ defense.

“I think we just got to figure out a good balance between our defense and our offense,” Hopkins said. “Our defense is so good right now it makes our offense look bad at practice. We just got to figure out to get things moving more on offense.”

“We got a really strong defense this year,” senior attack Noah Abbott said. “We don’t have a lot of depth, but our defense is good enough that we’re going to be able to take over with that.”

“I think, not to brag, our defensive core is pretty good,” senior defender Bryce Goodnough said. “I think our offense is definitely picking it up, though.”

The Frontier League will once again be top heavy this year and Fuller knows that his team will have to take the next step in order to contend for a Frontier League title this season.

“I think Carthage is — they’re going to be — when you talk about teams to beat, I think they’re definitely a team to beat. So is Watertown, and General Brown is tough.”

Expect the Spartans to turn things around and be in the top half of the Frontier League standings at the end of the season.

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