By Brooke Tunstall
WSL Special Correspondent

In a perfect world, Taylor Wisman would have spent his prep career surrounded by a supporting cast of middies that would have let him flourish as an attackman. In this lacrosse utopia, Wisman would have had teammates winning face-offs, burrowing for ground balls and setting him up with passes that always left him in the perfect position to score.

Unfortunately, like the rest of us, Wisman doesn’t live in a perfect world. So rather than focusing on being a goal-scorer, he slid back to midfield and along with his younger brother, Foster, did most of the grunt work himself.

In 18 games for Northshore, Wisman grinded out 177 ground balls, dished 35 assists and still managed to score 62 goals while winning most of his face-offs, according to the man who moved him from attack to midfield – father and coach Steve Wisman. For his efforts, Taylor Wisman is WSL’s Washington Player of the Year.

“Taylor is an attack whose coach forced him to play midfield. We had a good team, but we don’t have the talent (at Northshore) that some other programs have,” explained the elder Wisman. “Taylor sees the attack well and shoots very well and moves well. He could be a good attack. But if we didn’t put Taylor and Foster in midfield, they’d never see the ball and couldn’t attack.”

Taylor seemed to take the move in stride.

“Would I have rather played attack? Sure,” he said. “But lacrosse is a team game, and you do what you have to, to make your team better.”

The Wisman kids come by their lacrosse skills naturally. And Steve is somewhat of a pioneer among lacrosse in Washington. Their father grew up playing the game in the lacrosse hotbed of suburban Baltimore before moving to the Northwest before ninth grade.

“When I move out here around 1980, I helped start the high school team and there were two teams in the league,” he said. “By the time I graduated, there were six teams. Now…there are 52 or 54. Taylor and Foster have benefited from that growth, but at the same time they’re also part of the reason for the growth along with all the other kids who are playing the game now.”

Steve Wisman played adult lacrosse after becoming a dad and his boys were regulars at his games.

“It was a big part of our social life, and I think that’s where they developed a love of the game,” Wisman said. After my games, instead of having a beer with my teammates, I’d jump in goal and they’d take shots on me.”

Those shots continued till Taylor hit sixth grade when, Steve says, “those shots started to hurt. That’s when I knew Taylor could be a pretty good player and be a pretty good goal-scorer.”

While lacrosse has kept the Wisman clan together, now it is taking them apart, at least temporarily. Taylor recently enrolled at the Rochester Institute of Technology, which last year made the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division III tournament.

“Yeah, I’ll miss not being around my dad and brother everyday,” Taylor said. “But I’m looking forward to being around teammates that think the game at a higher level and are as into it as I am.”

And if RIT has enough good middies to let Taylor play a little attack? “That wouldn’t be so bad, either.”