GENEVA, N.Y. – His neck tie undone and dangling, Hobart attack Jeff Colburn eased onto a wooden bench inside Bristol Field House on Saturday and shrugged off that day’s game, nudged aside an ugly loss like his team had nudged aside so much in the past year.

‘As a team, we’ve been through a lot together,’ Colburn said following the Statesmen’s 5-4 upset at the hands of Rutgers. ‘It’s just another bump in the road.’

In less than 12 months, the Statesmen have endured a head coach’s departure, a teammate’s death and the program’s near-return to Division III. The turmoil, members of the team insist, has only drawn them closer and sharpened their focus. Despite Saturday’s hiccup, the No. 19 Statesmen (5-1, 1-1 ECAC) are off to their best start since 2005. They face No. 2 Syracuse (5-1) tonight, squaring off for the Kraus-Simmons Trophy.

For Hobart, this season is a small-scale revival for a team accustomed to success on a smaller scale, but now wedged in the middle of the big-time lacrosse pack.

Hobart offers no athletic scholarships. Lacrosse is the school’s only Division I sport, the big ticket for the small town of Geneva and the 2,315 students at Hobart and its sister school, William Smith College.

‘Hobart lacrosse, there’s a certain attitude about it,’ said junior attack Kevin Curtin. ‘We’re the underdogs. We’re not a huge institution that has a ton of athletic money to throw around.’

They play for crowds that are both devoted and inventive. Against Syracuse in the past, fans mooned Orange buses as they rolled into town. Hecklers tossed fish onto the field.

With students gone for spring break on Saturday, fans still convened onto McCooey Field’s metal bleachers and lined the chain-link fence surrounding the stadium. On a side street outside McCooey’s brick entrance, members of the Hobart soccer team sold hot dogs and hot chocolate.

‘Geneva, N.Y. shuts down when Hobart is playing,’ said Chuck Wilbur, a 1999 Hobart graduate and the current head lacrosse coach at Onondaga Community College.

Piles of lower-level collegiate titles built that fan base. Hobart dominated in lacrosse’s lower rungs – from 1980 to 1993, the school won 13 Division III titles, and 12 straight. Other teams offered little resistance.

So in 1995, the Statesmen rose to Division I. But dominance didn’t follow. The school has made the NCAA tournament four times, and had three winning seasons. Mediocrity replaced supremacy.

Last year, school officials sought to change that.

On April 26, Hobart beat Loyola, 10-6. Later that day, the school’s board of trustees announced a decision to drop back to Division III the following season. In a press release after the vote, board chairman David Deming said: ‘Moving to Division III will level the playing field for our coaches in recruitment and our students in competition.’

Phone messages left for Hobart Director of Athletics Mike Hanna and Hobart President Mark Gearan were not returned.

Soon after the announcement, the Hobart lacrosse network buzzed with activity. Alumni, fans and parents called the school and wrote e-mails. Some, like alum Joe Leska, signed online petitions asking the board to change its mind.

‘It just seemed sort of like a forfeit, like a quit, to me,’ said Leska, a team captain in 2001. ‘It was really only coming from a couple people. Coaches didn’t want to do it. Players didn’t want to do it. Ninety-nine percent of the alumni didn’t want to do it.’

But school officials heard the protests.

Five days after the initial announcement, the board recanted: The Statesmen would stay in Division I. In a letter announcing the decision, Deming noted the board was ‘humbled’ by the outpouring of response.

‘The community’s confidence,’ Deming wrote, ‘in the Colleges and in our lacrosse program to compete at the highest level has emboldened us and we are reminded anew of the spirit and tradition that inspires us all.’

The players, meanwhile, could only wait as adults decided their fate.

‘It was a rollercoaster for us,’ Jeff Colburn said. ‘There were a lot of highs and lows.’

The ride wouldn’t end yet.

The Statesmen finished 8-6 and missed the NCAA tournament for the fourth straight year. During the offseason, head coach Matt Kerwick stepped down. Kerwick, who is now assembling a program at Jacksonville University, could not be reached for comment. Jacksonville will begin Division I play next year.

In stepped T.W. Johnson, a Hobart assistant for four seasons. At the first team meeting in September, Johnson mentioned the Division III flip-flop, then told the team to put it in the past. They were a Division I team, he said. They could focus on Division I lacrosse.

But it wouldn’t be that easy. Grief would soon join the team’s jumble of emotions.

On Jan. 31, 20-year-old sophomore midfielder Warren Kimber IV was found dead in an off-campus apartment.

In the days after, the Statesmen drew on each other for support. ‘Our team really wrapped their arms around each other,’ Johnson said. ‘It’s been tough, but we’ve just tried to simplify things. Take it one day at a time.’

The season opened with three road games, bus trips to Binghamton, St. Joseph’s and Providence. They won all three. ‘Those were overnight trips,’ Johnson said. ‘I think it was good for us to be on the bus together and in the hotel, just being around each other.’

The team that rolls into the Carrier Dome tonight has struggled both on the field and off. Members of the team say they are stronger because of it.

Asked how the past year has shaped his team, Jeff Colburn leaned forward on that Bristol Field House bench and shrugged off the question.

Said Colburn, ‘Only brought us closer together.’

ramccull@syr.edu

Published on March 23, 2009 at 12:00 pm