Thompson Valley’s Wyatt Novak named Reporter-Herald boys lacrosse player of the year – Loveland Reporter-Herald

Thompson Valley’s Wyatt Novak is this year’s Reporter-Herald boys lacrosse player of the year after scoring 50 goals and recording 30 assists while earning honorable mention all-state honors. (Nathan Wright/Loveland Reporter-Herald)

Thompson Valley senior Wyatt Novak’s final high school lacrosse season didn’t get off to the smoothest start.

The Eagles forward entered his final pre-season campaign with a hamstring injury, which prevented him from playing well in his team’s first few games.

But once he recovered, he returned to his top scorer list, finishing with 50 goals and 30 assists, the highest on the team (per-match averages of 3.6 and 2.1 respectively), helping take the Eagles back to the playoffs and earned an honorable mention on the All-State team.

Capping off his four-year college career with such numbers and getting the chance to play in college has earned Novak the Reporter-Herald’s lacrosse player of the year award.

But before the accomplishments and accolades of his senior season, he had to learn the sport first.

Novak started playing lacrosse 10 years ago at the suggestion of his father, who proved to be a great influence on him as he learned the sport and later excelled at it.

“My dad introduced it to me,” Novak said. “He’d never played before. He just saw it on a YouTube video, I think, or it was on TV, but he got me involved and then he’s been with me the whole way through. He’s been with me the whole time.”

He started playing in clubs, but also watched successful Thompson Valley teams of the past. When he joined the school team as a freshman, he expected to split his time between playing on the junior varsity and the varsity.

It didn’t take long for him to earn a regular spot on the college team, appearing in nine games and scoring eight goals in the 2020-21 season, which was shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That was a great experience in my life,” Novak said of his freshman season. “It was one of my favorites in my lacrosse history. I went to the school and I had to swing center field, play a little varsity and a little JV, but the coach, Steve Payton, actually liked what he saw and I ended up playing varsity all four years. ”

In his first full season as a sophomore, he scored 30 goals, including six against Prairie View and five against Holy Family. He then finished his junior season with 40 goals and 16 assists.

Still, the Eagles never made the playoffs in three years on varsity, and that became a goal for Novak in his senior season, which also saw him playing for his third head coach in four years.

And as the Eagles prepared for the 2024 season under first-year head coach Manny Chavez, Novak was dealing with a hamstring injury. Despite that, he was determined to play in the team’s season opener against Boulder.

At one point in that match he felt a pull in his hamstring and realized he might have come back too quickly. So he sat out the next few games to make sure it healed before returning to the field.

“I thought I was ready for the first match,” Novak said. “I finally played the first match. I get a goal and on the next play, right after, I start running and I feel another pull in my hamstring. That put me out for the match after that and the match after that, so I thought I was ready, I wasn’t quite ready yet. I definitely should have taken a lot more time off than I did.

“The first four or five games I didn’t play at my best. I played down a bit because I didn’t want to hurt myself anymore and I was nervous.”

Eventually, Novak returned to full strength and the Eagles won enough games to make the playoffs for the first time since the 2019 season, the campaign before the COVID-cancelled 2020 season. Though they lost to Evergreen in the first round of the playoffs, it was a sign that the program was headed in the right direction after the Eagles won a combined 11 games over three seasons from 2021-2023.

Yet Novak’s most vivid memories of his senior season came not from the games in which he played well, but from the games in which he didn’t.

“Honestly, most of the games that stood out were games where I thought I played at the same level as everybody else,” Novak said. “I personally didn’t have a game where I thought I played my best, which is unfortunate, but that’s been the way it’s been all season. I was a little shocked when I got over nine points against St. Mary’s, I think.”

After scoring 128 goals with 65 assists at Thompson Valley, Novak will play collegiately at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo. He was recruited more by them for his play on his club team, 91 Northside, than he was at Thompson Valley.

He is excited about the opportunity to play at the next level, but is also eager to see how his former teammates at Thompson Valley build on the season they had in 2024.

The best of the rest

Jacob Adams, Resurrection Christian: The Cougars’ first-team freshman forward scored 59 goals (3.4 per game) and had 34 assists (2.0 per game) while earning second-team all-state honors.

Zander Adfield, Resurrection Christian: The Cougars’ first-team junior midfielder scored 49 goals (3.1 per game) and had 27 assists (1.7 per game), along with 261 ground balls, earning second-team all-state honors.

Calvin Scanlon, Thompson Valley: The Eagles midfielder was the team’s second-leading scorer and was selected to the conference’s first team after scoring 41 goals and adding 25 assists.

Dylan Crownover, Resurrection Christian: The Cougars’ junior first-team all-conference goalie averaged 9.3 goals against and 216 saves, for a save percentage of .596.

Mason Huner, Thompson Valley: The Eagles’ sophomore midfielder/LSM/DM was a first-team all-conference selection after helping lead the team to its first playoff berth since 2019.

Garrett Bretz, Resurrection Christian: The Cougars’ sophomore defenseman was named to the conference’s first team after finishing second on the team with 77 ground balls.