Apparently, Monica Joines gets to slack off this season after assuming the leading scorer role for the Syracuse women’s lacrosse team. At least according to the name of her new position:

Fat Man By The Crease.

That’s what coach Lisa Miller’s calls the No. 1 offensive player’s position on the field, though the nickname hardly conveys its responsibilities.

An attack-minded midfielder her entire career, Joines’ first game solely as an attacker comes Sunday at noon when No. 13 SU begins its season against Albany at the Carrier Dome.

It is also her first season-opener that is not against Virginia. As it turned out, SU picked a good year to end a six-year run of meeting the Cavaliers to the start the season. UVA is the preseason No. 1.

The new schedule gives Joines two games against lesser opponents, Albany and Binghamton, to get comfortable in her new spot before the Cavaliers visit the Orange on March 5.

As the team’s No. 2 scoring option the last two seasons, Joines played more of a pure scorer’s role on offense. During that stretch, she scored 74 goals but only registered 14 assists. As a midfielder, she often carried the ball into the offensive zone in transition before settling in as what Miller calls a dodger and a shooter – a one-on-one player.

But with the graduation of all-time leading scorer Leigh-Ann Zimmer, Joines drops the two-way midfielder role to focus all her attention on quarterbacking the offense.

As the fat man by the crease, a term Miller got from former SU star Paul Gait of the late 1980s, each possession begins with the ball in Joines’ stick. Her first option, like before, is to score. But if she doesn’t get a shot off, her second option is to distribute the ball to a cutter. She rarely was in position to do that last year.

‘She’s been working on her passing the whole year,’ Miller said. ‘It something we’ve talked about since the end of last season.’

She needs to improve her passing game because opposing teams are sure to concentrate on her with Zimmer gone.

‘If Monica gets double-teamed, what are we going to do after that?’ midfielder Jill DePetris said. ‘A lot of our plays that we’re trying to work out now, they’re plays that in case Monica gets doubled, we can have plays off of her.’

That’s exactly what happened in a win over Penn in SU’s only scrimmage on Feb. 12. Penn clamped down on Joines, forcing her to give up the ball a lot sooner than she had in the past. But that left other players open, and Joines found them in tallying two assists.

In the scrimmage, five of the team’s six goals were scored by midfielders. Only Caitlyn Dragon got in the scoring column for the attackers.

Joines said after the game Penn discovered she was more of a one-on-one player. She knows she must expand her repertoire to be successful in her new role. That role also involves calling out signals, much like a quarterback. But that comes naturally for her.

‘She’s doing a really good job so far telling everyone how they can improve to make the offense better,’ DePetris said.

For comparison sake, Zimmer led the team last season with 52 goals as the fat man by the crease, but she also led the team with 22 assists.

That proves as the closest offensive player to the cage this season, Joines is now in the best position to both shoot and pass. She surely won’t be as lazy as the position sounds.

Said Miller: ‘It’s heaven if you like to score.’

Published on February 23, 2005 at 12:00 pm