Say Hello To The Newest Dynasty In Sports After The Utah Archers Won Back-To-Back PLL Championships
The Golden State Warriors. The Tampa Bay Lightning. The Kansas City Chiefs. We've been fortunate enough to see quite a few back-to-back champs over the past decade. In a world where there's more parity in sports now than ever, it's not an easy accomplishment. It's not like the days when the Yankees would win 10 championships in a row because all the best athletes either got polio, died in a World War, or were just too poor during the depression to play sports. We're currently in the golden era of parity in sports. So winning one championship is impressive enough of it's own, but to come out and defend the throne by going back-to-back? If we're taking inflation into consideration here, that would be like 4 championships in a row if this were the 80s. Well within the definition of a dynasty.
And now we get to add the Utah Archers to that last.
There weren't many differences between last year's Archers team and this year's team that won the championship. But the couple of differences were pretty drastic. For starters, they were just Archers Lacrosse Club last year so this is the first time they've won since having the state of Utah attached to their name. Secondly, and most importantly, the Archers lost arguably their best offensive player in the final week of the regular season when Tom Schreiber went down with a shoulder injury.
He won the Midfielder of the Year award this year, was a team captain, and one of the best lacrosse players on the planet. Granted, the Archers still have a nasty core who can find the back of the net with Grant Ament, Mac O'Keefe, Matt Moore and Connor Fields. Granted they still have one of the best goalies on the planet in Brett Dobson, who just won his 2nd consecutive PLL Championship Game MVP Award. They still have one of the best faceoff-specialists in the game with Mike Sisselberger. But losing a guy like Tom Schreiber would be a death blow to most teams. It would be the Chiefs losing Mahomes. The fact they still followed through to defend the title shows how much of a wagon this team is.
17 saves. Back-to-back championship game MVP awards. Post-game shoey in the locker room to celebrate. Nobody was having a better Sunday than Brett Dobson yesterday. And I have to imagine there were a few more shoey's throughout the rest of the night after the boys got an extra $50,000 to take care of the championship bar tab.
Not bad, fellas. Not bad at all.
So congrats to the Archers on going back-to-back. Here's to hoping the Waterdogs bounce back next summer and go on a revenge tour to stop the threepeat.