Beverly High's Ginolfi leaves lacrosse legacy
If there has been a moment in Peter Ginolfi's 24 years of lacrosse that made him say, "Wow," it occurred a couple of weekends ago at Beverly High's annual alumni lacrosse game.
As nearly 40 of his former players took the field at Hurd Stadium, Ginolfi was amazed at how many memories started flowing when he looked at their faces.
There were players from his first Beverly team in 1996, players from the 2003 Division 2 state championship team, and players from this year's team who had just graduated.
There were a half-dozen All-Americans: Kevin Kaylor (class of 2002), Mike Sciamanna and Jeff Kaylor (both '03), Eddie O'Reilly and Larry Kline (both '04), and John Paul Wioncek ('05).
The alumni played a friendly game, odd numbers against even. Ginolfi could not pick sides.
"I stood in between the two teams," said Ginolfi, 38. "I stood in the box area, half wearing black, half wearing white, just talking to guys. At one point, they were all out there together. It was just a very proud moment."
After manning the Beverly sideline for 12 seasons, Ginolfi has decided to step away and focus on life with his wife and two sons, along with his job as assistant principal at the Higgins Middle School in Peabody.
He'll leave behind a team he helped construct from the ground up, when Beverly, Marblehead, and Salem were the only teams in the Northeastern Conference playing boys' lacrosse.
Since then, the Beverly boys have been the class of the conference. Under Ginolfi's guidance, the Panthers won 12 conference championships and strung together 98 straight conference wins, a streak that he hopes will reach 100 next spring.
If the team's success had an apex, it would have been in 2003, when the Panthers won the state title and Ginolfi was honored as the Eastern Massachusetts Coach of the Year.
"We had a great run," said Ginolfi, who posted a 196-73 record at Beverly. (Including his three seasons at Masconomet Regional, he's 214-85 overall.)
Beverly High athletic director Jon Longley said his tentative plan is to open the lacrosse job to applicants this month, conduct interviews next month, and have a new coach in place by the start of school.
"I think the position will attract a lot of quality candidates," he said. "I'm sure we'll get a wide range of candidates -- people who have been head coaches before, people who have been assistants. So I'm interested to see who actually is interested."
He hopes the next coach will have the same kind of impact as Ginolfi.
Ginolfi grew up in Billerica, a baseball town, but says that he wasn't much of a baseball player.
He had to choose another sport and, he said, "I didn't feel like throwing the shot put."
So he followed a friend's advice and took up lacrosse. Twenty-four years later, after playing at Colby College and coaching at the two high schools, he's taking a break.
He'll fondly remember wins such as the 2000 state semifinal victory over Weymouth, along with the 2003 state final win over Duxbury, not because of the championships but because of what the moments did for the program.
"We had over 6,000 fans at that game," he said of the 2003 final. "That got a lot of kids involved, kids that weren't interested in the game."
Now, he said, "it's everywhere. You just drive down the street and you'll see an open field and there will be two open lacrosse nets there."
Exeter girls on a row at regattas in England
The Philips Exeter Academy girls' crew team went international last month, competing in the Henley Women's Regatta in Thames, England.
The historic race was created in 1988 as a response to the lack of women's events in the Henley Royal Regatta, one of the oldest known rowing events.
In the two-day regatta, Philips Exeter competed in a field of roughly 300 teams from seven countries.
Jessica Flakne, Anna Johnson, Catherine Lucy, Catherine Morris, and Andrea Nortey competed on the varsity-four boat with coxswain. Teammates Allison Courtin, Rebecca Kisner, Rory Erickson-Kulas, Catherine McDermott, Elizabeth McDermott, Nancy McKinstry, Erin Metcalf, Katrina Regan, and Hannah Woodruff made up the eight shell with coxswain.
The Exeter, N.H., school's rowers made the most of their trip to England; the week before Henley, the eight boat won its event in the Reading Amateur Regatta.
Track star Smith adds baseball to her resume
As dominant as she was on the track last winter, Natasha Smith apparently is just as good on the diamond.
Playing center field for the Outlaws of the North American Women's Baseball League, based in Nashua, Smith was selected to play with the league's all-stars in the Canadian-American Women's baseball tournament in Detroit last weekend.
Smith, a Gloucester native who recently graduated from the Waring School in Beverly, ran track independently all four years because the Waring School does not field a track team and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association wouldn't allow her to run solo.
Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com. 