By Bill Alden

Joe Moore knew what he was getting into when he made his debut as the head coach of the Princeton Day School boys’ lacrosse team for its season opener at the Hun School last Thursday.

“It was pretty much what was I was expecting – high tempo, high speed, and a high level of lacrosse,” said Moore.

Hun took control of the tempo early on, jumping off to a 3-0 lead and while PDS pushed back, pulling to within 4-2 midway through the second quarter on a goal by Cal Caputo, it never got closer than that on the way to a 13-5 loss.

“We knew Hun was going to try to get out to an early start on us and they did,” said Moore. “Unfortunately we couldn’t rally back.”

Moore acknowledged that Panthers had to work through some opening day glitches.

“We kind of fell apart and got on each other a little more than I would have liked to see rather that sticking together,” said Moore. “It is early in the season, we have a lot of time to figure it out.”

With the new coaching staff installing new schemes, Moore is confident that the Panthers will be on the same page going forward.

“We have probably a 5-1 player coach ratio, it is no mistake for us that we have a bunch of coaches on the sideline,” said Moore, noting that his assistant coaches, Nate Small and Josh Frechette have extensive experience in the game.

“We have some pretty good guys in place at the coaching level and we put some new systems in place.”

PDS boasts two very good guys in senior attackman Coby Auslander and senior goalie Connor Green Auslander tallied two goals and an assist in the loss while Green recorded 17 saves.

“Coby is going to be an all around guy for us; he is going to be somebody that we look to to be that fireball for us to get the boys going in those situations when you are down and you need somebody to step up,” said Moore.

“Greenie is our guy; the cool thing about him is that he is consistent. He is always going to make those crazy saves.”

Learning from the opener, PDS showed more consistency as it defeated Peddie 20-3 on Saturday and then topped Princeton High 17-3 last Monday.

“It is playing together and how we respond, that is thing I talked about after the game,” said Moore, whose team plays at Lawrenceville on April 3 and Academy of New Church (Pa.) on April 6 before hosting Pennington on April 8. “We can either hang our heads or else we can turn this thing around.”