It’s coach Andrew Baxter’s third year at Fairfield. At times, it feels like it’s Year 1 because of some hard-earned continuity after the weirdness of a pandemic season. At times, things feel further along as the Stags add the former Yale assistant’s recruiting classes.
One thing it never seems like is slow. Not with the way Fairfield is running.
The Stags (6-4, 1-0 Colonial) are 16th nationally in scoring offense (13.9 goals per game) and shooting percentage (.320) and third in clearing (.900), producing an entertaining product that’s already tripled last year’s victory total entering Saturday’s trip to Drexel.
“From my experience, I’ve found it’s easier to play fast and slow it down than it is to start slow and go, ‘Oh, we have to play faster,’” Baxter said. “That was kind of the root of it all. Then looking at this league, I had some experience in it coaching at Drexel, and I knew for the most part not a lot of teams and programs in the league play at a higher pace. I thought, ‘That might be a good niche for us, so let’s start there and see what kind of traction we can get.’”
Gaining traction has required time, something in short supply last season. Fairfield was 5-2 in Baxter’s abbreviated debut season in 2020, but the inability to effectively build player-to-coach and player-to-player relationships while still dealing with relatively new schemes because of pandemic restrictions proved frustration last spring.
The Stags went 2-9, dropping all eight of their CAA contests and their final six games of the season. There were glimmers of how they wanted to play, closing the year with high-scoring losses to UMass (21-14) and Hofstra (18-14). But mostly, it proved challenging for everyone to really get to know each other.
Take a day last spring, when Baxter met with half of his roster before a practice (because that was all that was allowed in the locker room) and planned to go over the same things with the other half of the team after the session.
“We get out to practice and something happens in practice and I lose it and I’m like, ‘I just told you guys this before practice, that we needed to do this,’ and half the guys’ hands shoot up and they say, ‘Coach, we weren’t in that meeting.’” Baxter said. “And I say, ‘Oh, shoot, you guys are right.’”
Things have gone smoother this year. Credit some of it to a manageable non-conference schedule, one that has allowed the Stags to find much more success than in recent seasons. Their six victories are already their most since 2016.
But Fairfield also opened CAA play with a 12-10 defeat of Hofstra, its first league victory since April 6, 2018. And its offense has started to look the way Baxter envisioned it might when he first took over.
The Stags are one of only four Division I teams (along with Duke, Jacksonville and Michigan) to already have a pair of 30-goal scorers. Midfielder Taylor Strough (30 goals, six assists) has a pair of second-team all-CAA nods (2019 and 2021) to his credit and figured to be one of Fairfield’s best players.
Baxter also has found a long-term answer on attack in 6-foot-6, 220-pound freshman Jack McKenna (31 goals, three assists), who was a three-sport athlete at Fairfield Warde High School and didn’t play for a high-profile club team.
“He was probably a little under-the-radar, recruiting-wise. …,” Baxter said. “He’s just developing. He’s just a baby. He’s much more of a fierce competitor than I knew in the recruiting process. He wants to be great, which is everything at this level.”
Just as it isn’t hard to imagine McKenna becoming a high-production mainstay, it’s not difficult to envision Baxter putting his Yale background to use in incrementally making the Stags better. A common mantra around Fairfield this season is “better than yesterday,” a distinct echo of Yale methodically building into a national title contender over the last 10-15 years.
Things are still closer to the beginning than the end in the program’s development, and Baxter has prioritized a daily routine that is both rigorous and fun. Saturday’s victory was another step for a team that finds itself in a wide-open CAA after spending recent years at the bottom of the league.
“The guys we’re bringing in and the guys who are here who committed to me and my coaching staff knew what they signed up for,” Baxter said. “They knew we hadn’t had league wins in a few years, and that excited them. That’s what excited us about it; we wanted guys to sign up for something they knew was going to be hard. We have this us-versus-everybody mentality now, which is kind of cool.”
NUMBERS OF NOTE
2-0
Record in America East play for Vermont, which owns victories over NJIT (14-3) and UMBC (12-3). The Catamounts (5-6) have won their first two league games for the third consecutive full season (2019, 2021 and 2022) after doing so just once (1993) between 1992 and 2018.
20
Saves for Bryant goalie Luke Caracciolo in Saturday’s 8-4 defeat of LIU, tying the program record. Caracciolo matched the Bryant mark set by Matt Lovejoy in 2004 at Pace and tied in 2010 by Jameson Love at North Carolina.
73
Game winning streak against in-state opponents for Virginia that was snapped with Saturday’s 17-13 loss at Richmond. It was the Cavaliers’ first loss to an in-state opponent since a 13-10 loss at Washington & Lee on April 23, 1977.
288
Career points for Maryland attackman Logan Wisnauskas, two shy of Jared Bernhardt’s school record of 290. Wisnauskas, who had three goals and three assists in Saturday’s 20-12 defeat of Michigan, will have a chance to claim the record Sunday when the Terrapins play host to Rutgers.
.955
Save percentage for Siena senior Christopher Yanchoris in Saturday’s 10-1 defeat of Monmouth. Yanchoris made 21 saves while allowing just one goal to set the Saints’ single-game save percentage record. Brett Herbst had held the record since May 1, 2009, when he made eight saves and allowed one goal in a 7-1 defeat of Providence.