Growing up, Yorktown senior Kris Alvarado was an avid basketball and soccer player.
His purified blend of speed and reflexes rendered him a high-impact young gun, through countless youth leagues.
When his closest friends, the groundwork of Yorktown’s grass-roots lacrosse culture, implored him to try lacrosse, Alvarado seemed disinterested. He was hesitant. The distinctive love for the game wasn’t there yet. The stick hadn’t won over his heart, the way it had myriad childhood buddies.
Those same buddies are currently Alvarado’s highly-decorated lacrosse teammates on Yorktown, a perennial national force and NCAA launching pad.
When high school neared, when the prospect of one day filling the cleats of a varsity team then headlined by John Ranagan and Kevin Interlicchio came into view, the pressure re-emerged.
Every day, without fail, classmates peppered Alvarado with the same question: “Why don’t you play lacrosse?”
“I’ve always been told I’d be a good lacrosse player,” said Alvarado, now a key defensive midfielder and a presence on both sides of the ball for the Huskers.
“Early on, I just wasn’t sold on it.”
That all changed when one final, convincing sales pitch lured Alvarado in.
“I owe a lot of credit to (teammate) Austin Graham’s father,” Alvarado explained.
“Mr. Graham was a really influential figure who had a big impact on my decision to play lacrosse. He was the person that got me into it, who got me to put the stick in my hands.”
Austin Graham, like Alvarado, was a significant piece on Yorktown’s 2013 Section I championship team. Graham, who handles duties between-the-pipes, is headed to SUNY Plattsburgh.
Partly at Graham’s father’s urging, partly at Alvarado’s own desire to finally test the waters, he made his way to a starting role on the YAC team as an eighth grader.
Now, in Yorktown lacrosse years, that makes Alvarado a late bloomer.
“Right when I got into the swing of things in my first practice, I told myself ‘this is very fun.’ I knew it was something I would pursue. I played middie and I just stuck with that.”
As his supporters’ wishes have proved prophetic, Alvarado’s game has grown.
As a junior, the 5-foot-7, 165-pound Alvarado helped spark Yorktown’s frenetic attack.
Applying blanketing defense, Alvarado is best when he breaks out on the clears and ignitions Dave Marr’s high-octane offense.
The senior clocks a 4.7in the 40-yard dash. Alvarado’s ability to switch gears and transition speed helps feed Yorktown’s go-to options.
The Huskers possess enough speed to enforce a run-and-gun style. They have enough shooters and playmakers, however, to carve defenses in a half-field, read-and-react set.
“We just love to move the ball around and dodge from the X,” explained Alvarado.
“We play heady and try not to force anything. Despite losing our top two scorers (UMass freshman Nick Mariano and Stony Brook freshman Brian Prestreau), we fared pretty well during the summer. We won a lot of our tournaments.”
Over the summer, Alvardo evolved from strictly a facilitator, to a setup man and scorer. He popped at least one goal in every game. Quick feet and shifty tactics on the wing via face-offs render him a threat.
With the Huskers’ returning several trigger men, starting with Rutgers-bound shooter Conor Vecruysse, Alvarado possesses the goods to emerge into one of the Section’s primary dual threats.
His ability to play instinctively, fueling the Huskers’ transition game, opened the eyes of programs such as LIU-Post, Cortland, WNEC, and Plattsburgh.
Unlike his decision to play lacrosse four years ago, Alvarado didn’t flinch when making his NCAA decision.
“Honestly, Post felt like home to me, the coaches were great and very inviting. I knew they were a very good Division-II program and the opportunity to get to the national championship and compete at higher levels is there. It made sense.”
The Pioneers entered the 2013 campaign with minimal expectations in the ECC. A young, callow core eluded the eyes of pre-season analysts, as C.W. Post was thrust into the role of dark horse.
Post stormed its way to the ECC’s upper crust, culminating an 11-3 season with a berth in the NCAA tournament. The Pioneers fell to no.3 Le Moyne during a dizzying, 9-8 overtime battle during the tournament’s first round.
After bludgeoning John Jay-Cross River 17-3 in the Section I championship, the Huskers fell to a top-tier team under searing 97-degree heat.
“We know going in it was going to be a tough game,” Alvarado explained. “It was very intense, very back-and-forth. It was a great atmosphere in Albany, it was a very fun game, in the end it just didn’t come out our way.”
With a vast array of NCAA commits returning in 2014, Alvarado won’t need anyone to spark his passion for the game, as Graham’s father once did.
“We have a tight-knit core, I really love all the guys on the team,” Alvarado said. “We are as tight off the field as on it. We go everywhere together, we’re like a brotherhood.”
