Connections can go a long way in the college lacrosse world, and Ursinus is already benefiting from one that’s a 30-mile drive away.

On Feb. 8, the Bears trekked to Philadelphia and faced Penn for a spring scrimmage. Penn, of course, is a Division I program that last year won the Ivy League tournament and made the NCAA tournament quarterfinals. Ursinus was also no slouch in 2019, winning the program’s first-ever Centennial Conference championship before falling to Springfield in the NCAA tournament’s opening round.

As for how the opportunity at Franklin Field came about? Ursinus head coach Gary Mercadante has a close relationship with Penn head coach Mike Murphy, and Quakers assistant coach Dave Page was previously an assistant with the Bears.

“What our guys learned is that at that level when you make a mistake, you end up paying for it,” Mercadante said. “When you turn the ball over, it can become a goal against you immediately. Just having the opportunity to compete at that level and pace of play and size and physicality, that gave our guys a really good look at what we’re aspiring to be. It put us in a really good spot going into that opening game against Stevenson.”

How significant of an edge it provided is a debatable. But Ursinus did start its season with a win over MAC Commonwealth powerhouse Stevenson. Last year it was a 13-9 triumph over the Mustangs that shocked Division III, while last Saturday, it was a 13-12 thriller decided by a man-up goal from Aaron Grill with 12 seconds remaining. As a result, Ursinus climbed the Nike/US Lacrosse Division III Men’s Top 20.

They’re results that, when paired together, would almost seem unfathomable after Ursinus went 0-11 just two years ago. But Mercadante, now in his second year at the helm, has returned the program to its strong tradition. They completed winning seasons every year from 2013-17.

Staying on this upward trajectory is the hard part.

“The challenge now is we need to one-up that, we need to build on that,” Mercadante said of 2019. “That’s what this team has the challenge of doing. We came up short last year in the NCAA tournament, and that certainly left a bad taste in our mouth. But what our guys did see was what we’re capable of doing when our whole roster, top to bottom, is going in the same direction with our eyes on the same mission. For us as a new team, we had to make sure we’re on the same page and all working towards it.”

To accomplish that, Ursinus is figuring out what life after attackman Peter DeSimone, defenseman Alex Middleman and goalie Nick Kirk, among other graduating seniors, looks like. The good news is that DeSimone, a USILA Honorable Mention All-American last year alongside now-senior Bobby McClure, is back as an assistant coach.

“He was a captain and part of the coaching change, a major contributor, so having him on staff with his perspective has really been outstanding for our guys,” Mercadante said. “He does a really good job of connecting. We lost him, but we also kept him, in a way.”

As Ursinus builds upon last weekend’s win over Stevenson — its next test comes Feb. 29 against nationally ranked Christopher Newport — Mercadante is also aware of outside perception. It’s easy for others to presume that last year’s success was a flash in the pan, but they’re committed to debunking that line of thinking.

So far, step one is complete.

“We knew the natural perception from a lot of people after it is, they'd think it all was a one-year thing,” Mercadante said. “But something we remind our guys every day of is the way we work, the way we operate is the new standard. It's how we compete and the pace of play, the way we push tempo, those are the things we take a lot of pride in and we work hard to be good at. For us, within the walls of Ursinus, that's what we strive for.”