June 21, 2006

Residents of Carlsbad, Calif., could see the writing on the wall. Or, rather, they could hear it, like the incessant beating of a base drum. Thump. Thump. Casey Hingtgen had officially discovered lacrosse, and one of its true joys: rankling your neighbors.

Thump. Thump.

Year-round, the thumping persists on Avenida Pantera (Spanish for "Panther Avenue"), where warm weather and a 15-by-10-foot plywood wall greets Hingtgen as he walks stick-in-hand out the back door of his Southern California home. His father built it for him when the paint on the side of the house began to chip, Casey's freshman year of high school, and the thumping has not stopped since.

"I've gotten a lot of use out of it," Hingtgen says.

"Neighbors don't like it," says Dallas Hartley, Hingtgen's high school coach at La Costa Canyon. "While the other guys were playing football (in the fall), he was busy hitting that wall."

Hingtgen (pronounced Hin-chin), as bright and engaging as he is sometimes coarse, considers lacrosse an exercise in "attrition" - a clash of wills. In that regard, very few have come out of California as untarnished as the 6-foot, 180-pound long-stick savant. He led La Costa Canyon to consecutive California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) San Diego section titles, set a school record with 250 ground balls (an average of 10.4 per game) during the Mavericks' 24-0 campaign in 2005, and seldom received so much as a lick for his reckless loose ball pursuits.

On Saturday, Hingtgen will be in St. Louis playing for the West in the 2006 National Senior Showcase, a high-school all-star game sanctioned and hosted by US Lacrosse. Ninety-three players representing 32 states will participate in the event, which commences with games Saturday at the St. Louis Soccer Park in Fenton, Mo. Four teams -- the West against the North, and the South against the East -- square off at 9 a.m., with the winners playing for the NSS championship at 3 p.m. For more information, visit the official event site at http://www.uslacrosse.org/events/nss/showcase06.phtml.

For Hingtgen, it will be his second all-star game in as many weeks. He was also one of just 46 players who participated Sunday in the nationally televised Under Armour All-America Classic, but "this time, I get to play for the West," he says of the Showcase.

Considered to be one of the best long-stick midfielders of his recruiting class, Hingtgen's pursuers included Johns Hopkins, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Virginia. Hingtgen, with a 4.29 GPA, a 1940 SAT and an affinity for history, instead chose the Ivy League route, and will play lacrosse at Dartmouth beginning in the fall.

"Even if they were to get bitter, you just kind of have to tell them to shut up, and look at the stats. "

He's the second Southern California recruit to make that 2,976-mile adjustment in the last five years. Gavin Phillips, of LCC rival Torrey Pines, was a senior attackman this season for the nationally ranked Big Green, which qualified for the NCAA tournament in 2003. Sean McGonigle, Hingtgen's former teammate and longpole mentor, was a red-shirt freshman who played in six games for NCAA semifinalist Syracuse this year.

The buzz out of SoCal's most recent crop, however, has been Will Yeatman, a 6-foot-6, 255-pound attackman out of San Diego's Rancho Bernardo High and a prized football recruit as a tight end for Notre Dame, where he'll also play lacrosse.

Hingtgen's accomplishments were less heralded, but no less spectacular. Despite his position, he was La Costa Canyon's sixth-leading scorer this season with 14 goals and 12 assists -- all with a long pole. When the team struggled to assemble offense during a mid-April East Coast trip that included games against Maryland private school powers Boys' Latin and Georgetown Prep, Hartley even used him in extra-man situations.

"I had a lot of opportunities this year. They understand I'm pretty good with the ball," Hingtgen said of his offensive mates. "Even if they were to get bitter, you just kind of have to tell them to shut up and look at the stats."

Hingtgen can be like that sometimes, brutally honest. A two-time La Costa Canyon captain, his mouth was sometimes as stubborn as his internal motor, to the point where some mocked him during practice. "We'd call him Coach Hingten," Hartley says.

Still, the Mavs returned from their April swing just 8-4. Hingtgen's focus returned to defense, shutting down California's top attackmen and middies with a bothersome repertoire of slap and poke checks and textbook footwork, forcing their hand to capable close defenders in Cameron Zook (Towson) and Damon DeLuca. Either that, or Hartley would call for Black, a signature formation which casts out adjacent options and forces opponents to go one-on-one with Hingtgen.

And when the ball was jarred loose, as was inevitable, you-know-who was there to spark a transition, time and time again.

As a result, La Costa Canyon won 10 of its last 11 after that trip, suffering only an 8-4 setback to Torrey Pines in the teams' regular season meeting, avenged later by the Mavericks' 7-6 overtime victory in a rematch during their section semifinal May 18. Two days later, LCC defeated Poway, 5-3, in the San Diego section final.

"Defense is the foothold of our team, I guess," Hingtgen says.

That's an understatement. The Mavericks allowed just 3.1 goals per game during the finishing 11-game stretch.

Hingtgen grew up in Virginia, but ironically did not discover lacrosse until he moved to Carlsbad as a fourth-grader. He finished his high school career at La Costa Canyon with 18 goals, 28 assists and 569 ground balls. Now, he's East Coast-bound again -- with a stop in St. Louis, of course.

He hopes a prolonged East Coast lacrosse career bears better results in the long term.

"At first, East Coast guys looked down upon the whole West Coast as, `They're not as good as us.' And for the most part, they're right. We got whooped on by [Georgetown] Prep and BL [Boys' Latin], but they recognize that we're getting better. There are some players out here who can hang with the best of the East Coast," Hingtgen says. "Five years ago, they wouldn't have given us any respect -- we're starting to earn that, slowly but surely."

Of filling the void left by Hingtgen, Hartley says, "I don't think anyone ever will."