By Rick Woelfel
Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 11/9/11
Growing up in Arizona, Peter Auteri’s greatest athletic passion was baseball.
It was only after his family moved to Buckingham four years ago that Auteri picked up a lacrosse stick, in part because the baseball season in the Northeast was shorter than he was accustomed to.
“Nobody here plays baseball (year round),” he said.
He took to the sport fairly and is now playing for La Salle College High as well as for the Twist club team.
Auteri was in the lineup for Twist at the recent Quaker Laxfest at Radnor High. The daylong showcase featured 16 club teams from Long Island, central New Jersey, upstate New York, Maryland, and Canada, as well as the Philadelphia area. More than 100 coaches from 90 colleges and universities attended to take a look at some of the nation’s top prospects.
For a player still relatively new to the sport, showcase events are an ideal way to make up for lost time. It took a while for Auteri to adjust to being an attackman instead of an outfielder and pitcher.
“It took a year,” he said, “maybe more. You hit a wall sometimes, trying to catch up.”
Over time however, the soft-spoken junior developed a passion for lacrosse.
“Lacrosse is way more fast paced,” he said. There’s way more action. In baseball you’re just sitting around most of the time. Lacrosse is more explosive.”
It’s not uncommon for athletes at youth level to start out playing baseball before switching to lacrosse. But Auteri points out that the two sports call for different skills.
“Baseball is a lot of stop and start,” he said. “ Running base to base. In the outfield there is a lot of stopping and starting. In lacrosse there are a lot more sprints; we’re always running.”
At La Salle, Auteri is part of a program that has won three state championships since 2004, a case of winning as a byproduct of skill development.
Auteri notes that the coaching staff focuses on a back-to-basics approach.
“The LaSalle coaches have helped me a lot,” he said. “The program is geared toward building stick skills.”
