By James Joseph
WSL Senior Features Writer

If lacrosse teams were rock bands, high-scoring attackmen would be the lead singers, do-everything middies would be the lead guitarists and goalies would be the drummers.

Long-stick middies, if we continue the analogy, would be the bass players – typically fading into the background and doing the dirty work.

Most rock bands – and most championship lacrosse teams – typically are defined and guided by either a lead singer (attackman), a lead guitarist (middie) or a drummer (goalie).

But during the 2010 season, La Costa Canyon followed the bass line provided by senior long-stick middie Steven Bogert. And the Mavericks rolled with it all the way through a 23-0 season that was capped with the CIF-San Diego Section title.

“He was kind of our catalyst,” La Costa Canyon head coach Dallas Hartley said of Bogert, who was a team captain. “What he was able to do in the middle of the field kind of sparked our transition game....His work on ground balls and really his speed between the boxes was a game-changer for us.”

For providing the pulse for the Mavericks, Bogert, who was named an All-American and the CIF-San Diego Section Player of the Year, is also WSL’s California Boys Player of the Year.

A cornerback on the La Costa Canyon football team, Bogert could lock up players one-on-one on the lacrosse field like Deion Sanders did on the gridiron. He typically played against the other team’s top middie, though sometimes he would shadow a particularly dangerous attackman. He even dropped down and played close defense when necessary.

He was a ground-ball machine, scooping up a team-high 116 in 2010 (he had 288 for his career) and helping the Mavericks win face-offs with his work off the wing.

But he was best in the open field, clearing the ball, initiating the Mavericks’ fast breaks and sometimes ending them (he had a pair of goals and five assists). He did it with his speed. At 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds, Bogert was “not the biggest dude on the field,” Hartley said. “But he’s always the fastest. He can motor.”

A great example came in the beginning of the fourth quarter of the CIF-San Diego Section title game. Bogert cleared the ball up the sideline, ducked up inside at goal-line extended and scored to give the Mavericks some breathing room in their victory over Torrey Pines.

“We took the wind out of their sails with that one,” Hartley said.

And the Mavericks’ beat went on.