when one door closes another opens. The NFL draft and lacrosse season always makes me nostalgic. Enjoy.
For all intents and purposes, my football career ended on a cool October day in 1984 in New Rochelle, New York. I was thirteen-years old and playing linebacker for the Fairfield (Connecticut) Giants. We typically beat our local rivals but struggled when we’d cross state lines and play Westchester powerhouses. New Rochelle’s star player was a kid I knew from football camp named Curtis. He claimed to be related to a former Heisman Trophy winner but that assertion had as much veracity as my family ties to Bernie Parent, the Hall of Fame Philadelphia Flyers goalie. From the time we were eight-years old Curtis and I had gone to Offense-Defense football camp on the serene campus of Fairfield University. Because we were locals our parents would drop us off in the early morning and pick us up at night. Curtis and I were like feral cats during those long summer days seeking not food but autographs of the many NFL stars that visited my hometown for three weeks in June and July.
In the second quarter of our game, Curtis ran around his Right Tackle on a sweep. I freed myself from some blockers and tried to cut Curtis off just as he had turned the corner. We looked at each other as we both sprinted on what could have been a violent collision course. Instead, he straightened out, put his legs into overdrive, passed me, and looked back with his left arm out as if he were posing for his own Heisman Trophy. I reached out to try and pull Curtis down but he was too fast. When he knew I wouldn’t catch him, he put his left arm up, smiled, and waved at me on his way to the end zone.
Curtis’s mother perceived it as an arrogant gesture and scolded him when we met after the game. She claimed she had taught her son humility, but I was not angry for it was the output of joy among friends, one getting the better of the other. Nor was my father, who always welcomed hard doses of reality that only sports can provide. I congratulated Curtis on New Rochelle’s 40-6 victory although admittedly the facts remain blurry as I was likely concussed, a diagnosis confirmed later when I sat on the wrong team bus for twenty minutes. A teammate’s mother saw me sitting alone and staring aimlessly out the window on the Greenwich charter while the one destined for Fairfield sat idle because it was still missing its Weakside Linebacker.
That game was the last time I saw Curtis. The next Spring when the much-anticipated Offense-Defense pamphlet arrived in our mailbox, regaling the list of Cowboys and Steelers that would be assisting campers the upcoming Summer, I set it aside and asked my parents if I could join my brother, Scott, at West Point lacrosse camp. The stars attending that camp were only well-known in places like Yorktown, New Canaan, Towson, and Garden City, but the future seemed brighter in this sport. Curtis and I had harbored dreams of one day rooming together in the NFL. He’d be Walter Payton and I’d be Matt Suhey, Payton’s trusty lead blocker. But throughout that season when I was 13, I saw the writing on the wall that my future was not in football. It was a painful realization but one that I came to accept gradually, one concussion and missed tackle after the other.
My father’s acceptance of Scott’s and my desire to dedicate more time to lacrosse rather than football was begrudging. My father enjoyed how football toughened up boys raised in Connecticut rather than the streets of Yonkers, New York, where he grew up. His animosity towards lacrosse, which he perceived as a rich kids’ sport, was eased when my father took off from work and attended one of my brother’s games. He watched Scott, who played goalie, get pelted with a hard rubber ball, many shots ricocheting off his body, and applauded not at Scott’s success but at the punishment inflicted upon him. My father nodded in approval when he saw the extent of Scott’s equipment, a small thin chest protector, gloves and a helmet, which in the 1980s looked more like something worn by a World War II pilot ace but with a facemask.
“And they hurl the ball at you with this thing?” he said while grabbing a stick from the sideline.
“They really kicked your ass today,” he noted as he examined Scott’s bruised body.
The table was therefore set when I announced my own desire to play goalie. My coach was a gentleman science teacher named Vernon Gray who wore tweed sport coats during the day but harbored a competitive streak by the time afternoon came around. We needed a goalie and he pushed me to volunteer because I allegedly fit the bill.
“Lacrosse goalies,” he said, “were like cereals – all nuts and flakes.”
It was a decision that would forever change my life, opening doors yet to come. This was rooted in the patience of Coach Gray, who would dedicate large portions of practice to goalie training. I took this gift for granted at the time. Foolishly, I assumed that it was natural for someone to help me become better in life, that it was their duty rather than their choice. I was naïve then and looking back I wished I had thanked him, and all of my coaches along the way, more.
I would begin each game as if I was moving into my own little condominium on the field, an 18-foot diameter crease where only certain invited teammates were permitted. Each playing field brought varying perspectives and sightlines from which to watch the action from afar. The rush of adrenaline that would build as the play moved to my end of the field was exhilarating. I relished the opportunity to crush a midfielder’s hope by catching a shot otherwise destined for the back of the net. I remain a cordial person but cherished robbing an opponent’s joy as they attempted to invade my compact space on the field, which I was charged with guarding for the duration of the game. There was no place to hide as a lacrosse goalie. The way in which my performance was judged left no room for debate. The score provided the undeniable truth on whether I succeeded or failed in my job as the last line of defense.
As Scott’s and my career progressed, this grew difficult for my parents who wanted to defend their child as angry parents or fans made snarky comments about a shot we had missed, despite the vast number of mistakes preceding it. Most notable was my mother’s confrontation with a colonel who attended West Point’s victory over Scott’s Air Force team. The Army colonel and an eager-to-please cadet were chortling about a “7:1 kill ratio” as the score moved to 21-3. My mother had enough, turned to the colonel and asked him for his name. He obliged and then turned red as my mother admonished him for referencing “kill counts” with her boy on the field, the same one where Scott and I had spent summers perfecting our craft.
Graduation from the friendly confines of Coach Gray’s teams, where we experienced one loss in three years, was met with greater physical and mental challenges. As a teenager, I was diagnosed with keratoconus, an eye disease that destroys the structure of the cornea and leads to impaired vision. Because the cornea is constantly shifting, prescriptions failed after a few months. In high school and college, I would wave at people thinking they were my friends only to realize it was an old priest or a perplexed person who I had never met before and now curious why I was yelling at them from afar. “You guys are going to fail” I once shouted at what I was convinced were two friends from my dorm going to take a test but who turned out to be a father and daughter enjoying a Fall day on a pristine college quad. I overcame my vision problems by watching the angles of the opponents’ sticks and developing a technique of baiting and guessing. This led to some remarkable saves as well as some forgettable games where I flailed and looked foolish.
While I could improve my technique of saving shots I struggled more with personal demons of anxiety and self-doubt, the nemeses of any athlete in a sport requiring precision and timing. Unlike my vision troubles, I never received an official diagnosis for my internal angst. I enjoyed the spirit of competition but was terrified of failure. Each game offered a chance not to showcase my athletic prowess but an opportunity to let myself, my family, and my team down. The most important trait a goalie must possess is a short memory. I had quick reflexes during my lacrosse career but was stunted in my development by the internal voice that questioned why the last shot went in.
My fear of failure was intensified by the reality that there is only one tenant of that little condominium on the field. Competition throughout high school and college proved to be a doubled-edged sword. It heightened my senses and forced me to never take a day off, but it also exacerbated my anxieties. In high school, thoughts of keeping the starting goalie position in the family upon my brother’s graduation was challenged by my classmate, Chris Surran, who had passed on enrolling in the powerhouse Wilton High School to join me at the all-boys Jesuit school, Fairfield Prep. During the next four years, we competed against each other for playing time and the affections of our coach and teammates. We were constantly looking over our shoulders, a reflex that proved superfluous as ultimately, we both found a home, Chris at Syracuse, where he would lead them to a National Championship, and me at Notre Dame where the team was building a foundation for future success.
I never found an emotional balance and sturdy mindset until my Junior year in college when it took three near-tragedies to help me see the light. After Fall Break, my roommate and teammate called to tell me that the cyst we had joked about for months and had given a name, was actually a form of Hodgkin’s Disease and that he was going to have to undergo treatment and miss the remainder of the academic year. This existential lesson was hardened a week later when my mother called me from a hospital to let me know that my father had collapsed in our driveway. They had revived him but his heart had been severely damaged from a form of cardiomyopathy. A few months later, before returning to school during my Winter Break, the car my mother was driving and in which Scott and I were passengers, skid off the Merritt Parkway on a patch of black ice and flipped over twice. I was in the backseat and tossed out the trunk. When we finally came to a halt, half of me was in the car while the other was on the highway peering at oncoming traffic. Each of us walked away severely traumatized but with only mild injuries.
When I returned to campus a week later and began the annual competition against the other goalies on the roster, the anxiety and resentment that had plagued me for so long was held at bay. I no longer felt constricted by the internal voice of self-doubt. The health issues suffered by my friend and father, as well as my own harrowing experience, helped me tap into something deeper within me. I let go and realized that playing a sport with friends was the greatest gift one could have regardless of the unnecessary pressure I put on myself. Getting hurled through the trunk of an SUV helped restore the dreams that had once pushed me to succeed on the playing fields of Fairfield when I was buoyed by the sheer pleasure of competition and not plagued by the demons of self-denial. My new goalie coach, Chris Burdick, advised me that it was a difficult but pivotal life lesson to discover that everything ends. Just as there are a finite number of steps and breaths one will take in life, there are a limited number of shots a goalie will face. And if you dwell on the last one you missed, you will fail to witness the beauty of the next shot coming your way, as well as the cathartic high that follows each save.
*******
For all intents and purposes, my lacrosse career ended on a beautiful Spring day in the same state where my football career ended, about 30 miles up the road from New Rochelle in Long Island, New York. The outcome was different. Instead of a humiliating loss, my team enjoyed a thrilling a 9-8 victory over Hofstra University, which entered the game ranked in the Top-20. The verdict was secured when I made a point blank save with under a minute left in the game. My teammates swarmed me before representatives of a local bank, which had sponsored the game, awarded me the MVP plaque, which I subsequently handed to my father, who was miraculously present in the stands.
While my teammates headed to the locker room, I was interviewed by Newsday, who sent a local stringer to cover the game. I answered the questions as if I had been coached by Crash Davis in Bull Durham.
“We just need to take one day at a time,” I implored the 100 or so people who might read the article. “We have a long season ahead and we need to be ready in May to take the program to the next level.” Those next steps would take years to achieve under the patient helm of Kevin Corrigan, who still remains head coach today. During the following games it was clear I could not replicate the high of that miracle ending, and the remainder of my senior season buckled from the weight of such lofty expectations.
For a few more hours in Long Island though I was still living a fantasy every child dreams about. As I wrapped up my interview and headed to the locker room, I saw one of our managers talking to a Hofstra usher. They were in a huddle chatting with an older man wearing a Notre Dame baseball cap. His arm was resting on a wheelchair, where a young man with cerebral palsy was sitting. Jeff waved me over. I obliged and introduced myself.
“Great game” the father said.
I thanked him, trying to process the goodwill that had gone my way in the span of the last hour, all derived from placing my goalie stick in the way of an oncoming shot just as Vern Gray had taught me years before. The father explained that he was a Notre Dame graduate and lived on Long Island. He and his son had just gone for a long run that morning and thought they’d catch the game. The father asked me questions about the big goalie stick I carried and how hard it was to maneuver. He showed it to his son who smiled with pleasure. The father poked fun of my lack of protective gear and seemed to admire the toughness required to play lacrosse goalie.
“A run?” I asked the father inquisitively while eyeing the son, whose contortions at first evoked pity rather than admiration.
“We’re training for a marathon,” he replied, checking off all the ways his son contributed to their team, like keeping pace and motivating his father when he grew weary.
“He looks back at me when I’m tired,” the father said proudly. “He knows the right buttons to push.”
The father asked me about my future plans. What was I going to do after graduating from Notre Dame? I had a clear vision about going to Washington, D.C. in the hope of making the world a better place. The father smiled at my youthful exuberance while clearly sensing my naivete.
Years later, whenever I would return to Fairfield and see the plaque my father had hung up on his office wall, I would remember the father-son team who greeted me after the game. I was reminded of just how different the son’s athletic journey was from my own, how both my father and this father swelled with pride for the very same reason: watching their sons compete despite the vastly different challenges each had faced along the way.
“Well,” the father said shaking my hand before jogging off, “we just wanted to meet you and say hello.”
I thanked them and walked towards the locker room, where the Hofstra usher had begun opening the door for me. As I had learned from Curtis years before and from the father-son team I had just met, you just need to keep running towards whatever door opens for you. And a wave is not a gesture of defiance telling you goodbye, but an invitation welcoming you to the journey that is to come.