Hereford High's Powerhouse Lacrosse Team Continues to Dominate

Hereford High School senior attackman, Tyler Dimes, is a walking, talking advertisement not only for the Bulls' boys lacrosse team, which has become Maryland's most dominant public school program, but the school's academics.

In addition to being the Bulls' scoring leader, with a team-high 31 goals to go with 21 assists, Dimes is also headed for the University of Delaware, where he will major in engineering. 

Dimes carries a weighted 4.3 grade point average over a curriculum that includes advanced placement physics and calculus, and he scored a 1900 on his SATs.

Dimes could easily have used that repertoire to gain entry into one of the Baltimore area's lacrosse-rich private schools of the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association, yet he elected to remain in the Hereford district.

"One thing that does help us is that we do actually have a very good school. Hereford is a great school, so parents bring their kids in here, and they move in here," said Dimes. 

"So, then, all of a sudden we have this influx of parents bringing these new boys in and they get involved in our youth and recreation programs," Dimes said. "Our youth programs are very good, and once we get to high school, we've shown, 'Hey, this is high school lacrosse, get used to it.'"

Dimes was a freshman on the junior varsity squad when the Bulls' varsity earned the Class 3A-2A state title over Walkersville High School under then-coach Carl Runk, but was elevated to the varsity the following season, the first for present coach, Brian King. 

As a sophomore, Dimes scored a goal during the Bulls' second state title win over Centennial High School of Howard County. 

Dimes' face was featured on the cover of a local newspaper touting the win, and that was an experience that he will never forget.

"Where a lot of teams have a lot of seniors, we plan ahead," Dimes said. "We fill out some of the other roles with sophomore and juniors and other underclassmen because we know that they are the future."

Some of those under classmen filling prominent roles are sophomore Joe Seider, who ranks second in team scoring with 22 goals and 21 assists, and sophomore goalie Conor Cunningham and junior faceoff specialist and midfielder Teddy Demiris. Demiris' has won 69 percent of his faceoffs, and Cunningham has yielded an average of 2.1 goals per game.

Dimes also sees promise in a freshman teammate. 

"We have, for example, our little attackman, Jason Ashwood, who has been playing big and getting a couple of goals," said Dimes. "We call him, 'The Franchise,' because we know that he's a freshman and that he's going to be there for the next three years."

The Bulls will take a 10-0 record into this weekend's tournament at Broadneck High of Anne Arundel County, where they will participate along with Howard County power Glenelg High School and Frederick County power Urbana High School. 

Under King, the Bulls are in pursuit of their fourth straight Class 3A-2A state title. So far this season the Bulls have already have vanquished last year's Class 4A-3A state champion, Severna Park High School, 6-4, in a game at Hereford that is part of the Bulls' 24-game winning streak at home. 

"When I took over after the 2008 state championship with the goal of building a program. Winning is an accomplishment, but sticking around is another thing," said King, whose Bulls have an overall mark of 48-2 during his three years at the helm.

"We've never lost at home, and we've only lost one county game to Towson. But we've been fortunate to be able to have run the table since then," said King. "Some of our biggest competition has been the Fallston games. No matter how many games that we've won, we've always strived to get better."

The Bulls are riding a 27-game winning streak, having not suffered defeat since last year's 8-7 setback against Fallston High School of Harford County. 

In addition, the Bulls have not lost to a Baltimore County team since March 27 of 2009, when they lost to Towson, 11-8.

A 1994 graduate of Harford County's C. Milton Wright High School who played for a national championship team at Washington College in 1998, the 35-year-old King has abandoned the expensive gold jerseys purchased for the Bulls, believing that they are bad luck. 

"We bought these gold jerseys because we thought that they were cool. But we're 48-2, and the two losses were when we were wearing those gold jerseys," said King, a former attackman. "So, they're in a box, locked away. We wore them two times, but we'll never wear them again."

King also credits assistant, Steve Turnbaugh, also the coach of the Bulls' three-time state title-winning football team, as well as late, former assistant, Tom LaMonica, who died last fall. 

"With Tom LaMonica as an assistant, and with Steve Turnbaugh, also, they really walked me through some tough times during the transition, so I've been fortunate to have had talented assistant coaches and talented kids around me,"  said King, whose Bulls have excelled despite the graduation of area Player of The Year, Rustin Bryant, who is now an attackman at the University of Maryland. 

"We graduated 19 seniors from the 2008 team that won states," said King. "But we were fortunate to be able to come back and win it again the next two years. This year, we're replacing our entire defense and graduated 50 percent of our offense."

Senior defender Nick Bittner has anchored the Bulls' defense of senior Corey Nettleton and junior Austin Brown in front of sophomore goalie Conor Cunningham.

"This is my third year on the varsity, and I was able to score two goals against Catonsville," said Bittner. "It feels great to be on a team that is this balanced. You could see that when we beat Fallston earlier this year, 7-6, they still had a chance to win because they had the ball with two minutes left."

"At that point, you know, we sort of all just got together and looked each other in the eye, and at that point, we knew that we weren't going to lose," said Bittner. "That's what makes a great team. It's just the team chemistry."