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07/13/2017 12:00 AMThe Valley Regional boys’ lacrosse team achieved its greatest campaign in program history this spring, and recent graduate Rocky Harpin used his offensive prowess to play a pivotal role in the Warriors’ success. Rocky and his fellow attackers found the back of the net with regularity, although Rocky also proved a great facilitator on the field. This is why Rocky made the All-Shoreline Conference First Team and earned the Offensive Player of the Year Award for Valley Regional, which claimed its first conference crown.
Rocky first stepped on the lacrosse field when he was in 5th grade after having played hockey for some time. Lacrosse appealed to Rocky right away, and so he continued playing all the way through his senior year of high school. As a result, Rocky has formed long-lasting friendships with many of his Warriors’ teammates.
“We’ve been playing lacrosse since 5th and 6th grade together. We’ve had that chemistry and that desire to win together,” Rocky says. “We’ve been grinding together for years. We love to play. It was our thing we loved to do together.”
Rocky and his fellow seniors set their sights on guiding Valley to its first Shoreline Conference title this year and, together, they realized that goal. After going 12-4 for the regular season, the Warriors routed defending champion Old Lyme, 16-4, in the semis before netting a 10-6 victory over Haddam-Killingworth in the final. Rocky tallied three goals with an assist in the championship game, and it was a huge moment for him and his teammates to capture the team’s first league title.
“I think [winning the Shoreline title] was my biggest achievement,” says Rocky, an Essex resident. “The team came together, pulled through, worked hard, and motivated each other throughout the season. That was our goal, and to pull together and do it was special.”
Rocky knows that it took an all-out effort from the Warriors to pull off their victory versus H-K. Rocky credits Valley’s defense for holding down the Cougars’ attack and says those big stops in the backfield bolstered the Warriors’ confidence on offense.
“Looking on throughout the game when I was on the front of the field, I was watching the middies, and the defense shut down H-K’s offense,” Rocky says. “It gave us the motivation to think that we really could pull it off.”
Another reason why Rocky believes Valley played so well in the Shoreline Tournament was the three-game losing streak that the Warriors endured during latter half of the regular season. Rocky believes those defeats drove the team to perform at its peak in the playoffs.
“We came together and talked about those losses that we had, and we focused on what we had to learn to get better,” he says. “It gave us an advantage, because we definitely did not like losing one bit.”
Valley’s Head Coach George Hudson constantly saw Rocky make all the right plays on the turf, even when opposing defenses played him tough.
“He was an all-around offensive player for us, and he handled pressure well,” Coach Hudson says. “He had the vision to see the field and move the ball to the next guy. It wasn’t just about scoring for him. It was about getting the ball to the open player.”
Rocky wound up recording a team-leading 90 points between his 56 goals and 34 assists this season. Rocky’s approach as an attacker adhered to Valley’s collective offensive game-plan: share the ball, make the extra pass, and then take the open shot.
“Look for the open look and not necessarily try to hit the net every time I got the ball,” says Rocky. “We were all selfless players.”
Rocky wasn’t one of the Warriors’ captains, but you wouldn’t have known it based on the way he helped lead the offensive unit at practice. Rocky’s effort proved especially helpful for Hudson, who was flying solo without an assistant coach.
“At practice, sometimes I would let the offense take care of themselves. It was good to have Rocky’s senior leadership on offense to get through the drills when I was on defense,” says Hudson. “He was a good kid, a good player, and a good leader. He wasn’t a captain, but he definitely stepped up as a leader on the team. He showed the kids how it should be done.”
Rocky was OK with the fact that he wasn’t named one of Valley’s captains. He still viewed himself as a leader and took it upon himself to set a good example for the Warriors’ younger players.
“I think me not being captain didn’t really matter to me. It was about the team striving together. Being on the attack team, I was the only senior, and I think they looked up to me for leadership,” says Rocky of his underclass teammates, Davis Burleson and Sean Cole. “In their next years playing lacrosse, they can look to that and, hopefully, it will help them have success down the road.”
This fall, Rocky will attend Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, where he will major in finance with plans to make the school’s Division II lacrosse squad as a walk-on. Looking back at his time with the Warriors, Rocky thanks Coach Hudson and his teammates for helping to make his senior season as sweet as can be.
“I would like to thank Coach Hudson. He had a huge role as the only coach this year. He had to run both offense and defense, and he did a tremendous job on both sides of the field to motivate us,” says Rocky. “I’d also like to thank the rest of the seniors for all of the years playing lacrosse together and for pushing each other to get better and bring a banner back to the school.”