Men’s recruit: Malvern Prep’s Poirier yet another Philly recruit to pick Bryant

By Chris Goldberg
Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 3/12/09

Malvern Prep senior attacker JK Poirier has signed a letter of intent to play next year at Bryant.

Poirier is one of four Philly seniors to sign with Bryant, which is playing its first year of Division I lacrosse under former Duke coach Mike Pressler. The other signees are Downingtown East’s Mason Poli, Penn Charter’s Mike Rauchut and St. Joseph’s Prep’s Ian Correia.

Poirier said he liked the Smithfield, R.I., campus and the chance to play for a building program that already is showing success (4-3 record this year). He credited his head coach, John McEvoy, for getting him noticed by the Bryant staff.

“I really have to give most of the credit to coach McEvoy, he pulled a lot of strings,” Poirier said. “I really liked the campus and met one of the assistant coaches. A few weeks later I met coach Pressler and I fell in love with the school.”

Poirier, who plans to major in business, is hoping to make an immediate impact at Bryant.

“They have four senior attackmen so there will be shoes to fill next year,” he said. “Hopefully, I can work in some minutes and get a spot.”

For now, Poirier is intent on helping the Malvern Prep offense. The Friars return an experienced defense and a standout goalie from an Inter-Ac League championship team, but lost a lot of top offensive threats.

“We have a lot of shoes to fill with guys like Matt Mackrides and Chris Layne graduated,” he said.

Poirier is confident Malvern will fare well against a top-notch schedule.

“I think that since we cannot play for the state championship, we have reached out to play other teams,” he said. “We’re playing a lot of Maryland teams and we probably wouldn’t have played as tough a schedule if we were going for the state championship.”