Saint’s five goals propel him into spotlight

Thanks in large part to junior attackman Jacob Edwards, the Nansemond-Suffolk Academy boys’ lacrosse team recovered from a season-opening loss to Grassfield with a 14-1 blowout of First Flight High School. Edwards supplied a team-high five goals to become a nominee and winner of the Suffolk News-Herald’s Player of the Week poll.

Edwards said it was the way his team got its opportunities that enabled him to score.

“A lot of transition offense frees up a man, and when that happened, I was the man that got freed up,” he said.

Saints head coach Jeff Forman has come to expect good things from Edwards.

“He’s been playing for many years, he knows the game, he’s got a good field sense,” Forman said. “He can certainly control that left-handed attack position.”

Forman coached Edwards at the under-11 level, as well as U-13, and has been able to track his development.

“He was always very good, and he just has continued to get better over the years and certainly kept pace with the rest of the players in improving his skills,” he said. “He’s bigger, stronger, faster, and his left-handed shot has always been good and continues to improve.”

Edwards started playing when he was about 8, and he credits a sibling for getting him into the sport.

“It was pretty much my brother and his friends, because I was playing baseball when I was younger, and I went and saw one of their lacrosse games and quit baseball and started playing lacrosse,” he said.

Sam Edwards played at NSA and even shared the field as a senior with his younger brother, Jacob, who was a freshman at the time. Sam, who continues to play at Virginia Wesleyan College, was happy for his brother.

“All the work that he’s put into it, the commitment, it’s really showing now, it’s paying off for him,” he said. “He’s a good all-around kid, a really good athlete and it’s cool that he’s getting recognized for his athletic achievement.”

Jacob played for Hampton Roads Lacrosse when he was younger and now enters his fifth year at Nansemond-Suffolk. The two prior to this year were also on the varsity team.

He explained the appeal of the sport for him.

“It’s just a fast-paced game,” he said. “There’s always something going on. It’s really competitive.”

He also has played football in the past and expects to return to the gridiron next year, but lacrosse remains his favorite sport. He would like to play it in college, but he’s uncertain, at this point, whether that will happen.

Edwards said his biggest motivation comes from his girlfriend and fellow NSA lacrosse player, Olivia Elliott. Before games, she challenges him to score a certain number of goals, and the number is not low.

But if Edwards’ performance in the First Flight game is any indication, high standards are within his grasp.

 

Editor’s Note:

Trouble with the poll

There’s a reason polling companies do not rely on the Internet for polling data on important things like presidential elections. And there’s a reason young adults have turned the tables on their aging parents by warning them not to believe everything they see on the Internet.

As it turns out, the Internet is a place crawling with deceitfulness and fraud. Who knew?

The sad truth became glaringly obvious to us sometime Wednesday afternoon, as we watched the votes on our website poll for this week’s Player of the Week begin climbing into the stratosphere.

At first, we were just excited, figuring word had finally gotten out about the poll and readers’ chance to pick the athlete we would feature on today’s sports page.

At 6:25 p.m. Wednesday, here’s what we saw on our poll tracker:

• Sami Gizara, LHS softball, 3,970 votes
• Bo Lawrence, KFHS soccer, 3,359 votes
• Trevor Riggs, NRHS baseball, 136 votes
• Jacob Edwards, NSA lacrosse, 87 votes
• Total voters: 7,552

By the time we closed the polls a little more than half an hour later, the standings were as follows:

• Bo Lawrence, 4,757 votes
• Trevor Riggs 4,652 votes
• Sami Gizara, 4,757 votes
• Jacob Edwards, 4,603Votes
• Total voters: 19,256

Perhaps you can see the problem. We’d love to think there was a last-minute rush from every high school sports fan in Hampton Roads to visit the Suffolk News-Herald’s website and vote for Player of the Week, but we’re pretty sure that’s not what happened.

As it turns out, there’s a pretty simple script that can be used to spoof polls running on the software we use. That’s clearly what happened.

So for this week’s feature, we omitted the website polling totals from our calculations, counting only email and Facebook votes. We’ll return the poll to our website once the folks in IT figure out how to lock out multiple and automated votes.

As for us, now we’re wondering about that check we’ve been waiting on from Nigeria.

— Res Spears