Dealing With Rejection As a Lacrosse Recruit

Fred Opie (far left) in a Herk vs. Nassau game at Hofstra University 1983  

It’s that time of the year when college coaches are out traveling around the country watching tournaments and checking out prospective players and deciding who they can and should recruit. Soon some players will start receiving email, mail, and phone calls and invitations to visit campuses. Some highly coveted players entering their sophomore and junior years in high school are starting to feel the pressure. Those not   receiving any "love from coaches" are starting to feel low self-esteem.  My story as former scholarship lacrosse player at Syracuse University and U. S. National Team player may surprise you. I did not receive allot of love my junior or senior year. As senior I might have received two letters from Division III coaches  My prospects improved after attending junior college (JUCO) at Herkimer County Community college and playing for now Hall of Fame Coach Paul Wehrum.  I first tearn All American honors my first year at Herkimer but the honor did not help my case much because are team did not advance to the final four teams in the JUCO championships. That was the stage in the game when coaches came to see players like they now do at summer tournaments and thereafter offered opportunities to the players they believed would contribute their programs. Clay Johnson from my hometown played for Maryland and he was my hero. Thus naturally I wanted to play for Maryland one day. The problem was I recruited Maryland harder than they recruited me a guy with little notoriety. University of Maryland coach Dino Mattessich supposedly sent somone to watch me play against Nassau Community College on the island. Nassau was the top rank team in the nation at the time and players from the program regularly earned scholarships to the top lacrosse programs and schools in the country. I played perhaps my best lacrosse ever. However following  the game Maryland continued show little interest no discussion of scholarship money occurred. I sent inquiries’ to the coaches at Carolina and West Point receiving in turn cordial rejection letters. It was during this time I learned the skill of how to spot a rejection letter without opening the envelope. This skill would later serve me well as I tried to get my first books published from 2000 to 2009. Syracuse went on to beat Maryland in the NCAA quarter finals that year in the Career Dome. Coach Dino Mattessich resigned as the Maryland lacrosse coach shortly thereafter and left coaching to become an athletic director. I don’t believe one of my many phone calls to the Maryland lacrosse office ever made it pass the secretaries who screened calls; nor did any of the coaches return my calls. Now that friends and people who I've coach are college coaches, I better understand both the process and just how many contacts they get about prospective players. Most do the best they can returning calls and emails but they are simply understaffed and overworked. Coaches feel terrible when a great player gets overlooked and players feel slighted when coaches show them no love. I certainly learned over the years how to make myself more attractive as I candidate and much of what I learned happened through lacrosse. Perhaps most importantly, I learned how to separate what I do from who I am and the importance of fit when potential employers or publishers say no to me.

My College Recruiting Series: 

 http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=recruiting

http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=College+Lacrosse+Recruiting+Series

Summer League Series: Part 1 My Story

That me “the brown person” as my six year old daughter would say in ninth grade (click the image to enlarge)

I am starting a new series today on summer league lacrosse. My lacrosse playing days started in the summer in the mid-1970s.  Our physical education teacher, Don Daubney, a Springfield College grad, taught a lacrosse (soft stick and soft ball) unit every spring to his eighth grade classes. He followed that up with a summer rec program that lasted about three or four weeks. We learned the basics and once we had them down, the summer program culminated with a game against the Lakeland/Walter Panas rec program. Like my first Division one game at Syracuse against the North Carolina Tar Heels, I was both scared and thrilled at the same time. We faced off on Lakeland middle school field across from the old Westchester Mall on route 6. That summer league space would continue to have an important impact on my lacrosse career and that of many others. The summer before I entered 9th or 10th grade Steve Mabus’ family moved on street.  At the time Steve played college lacrosse at Kutz Town State in Pennsylvania. Don’t remember how it started, but before I knew it, Steve and I started playing catch, shooting on goal in his yard, and played one on one in his yard. Steve played in a college summer league at the Lakeland middle school field and started taking me along his game. I remember watching Scott Finlay (Yorktown, West Point), Scott Nelson (Yorktown, North Carolina State) and Bill Simunek (Walter Panas, St. Lawrence), Greg Rivers (Yorktown, Delaware) and Clay Johnson (Croton, Maryland) play. These guys were terrific athletes, with great sticks, and lacrosse intellect. Watching them provided a visual image of how the game should be played. Graduate school advisors once told me that I should apply to the best possible Ph.D. programs. She explained, “You will rise to the occasion in an atmosphere of very bright people and become a much more polished scholar.” The same is true with the summer lacrosse you watch and the leagues you play in.