The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, February 3, 2021 — 20
DREW COX
Daily Sports Editor
Michigan lacrosse: The Club Years
As a Midwestern youth in the
1980s, John Paul was one of the
few in Ann Arbor to be fascinated
by the sport of lacrosse. And what
started out as a backyard game
for Paul to play with his friends
became a collegiate commitment, a
professional career and, above all,
an unparalleled lifelong passion.
The first time John Paul tried to
start a lacrosse program, he was shot
down. In the early 1980s, Paul was a
student at Pioneer High School in Ann
Arbor. Like most athletic, Midwest-
ern teenagers of his decade, he spent
his after-school hours playing football
in the fall and basketball in the winter.
Paul’s spring seasons were always
unfilled, though. Paul knew about
lacrosse and casually played from
time to time. He grew up with the
sons of fabled Michigan club lacrosse
coach Bob DiGiovanni, who revived
the previously defunct program with
his friends in 1965 and intermittently
coached the team in the 1970s. But
playing the game competitively was
never an option for Paul growing
up. Pioneer — like most high schools
west of the Appalachians at the time
— didn’t have a program for the tradi-
tionally East Coast sport, and the high
school’s athletic department reject-
ed his attempt to field his own team.
So when Paul weighed his options
for college, he knew he wanted to go
somewhere he could play lacrosse.
Albion College, less than an hour
from Ann Arbor, had a student-run
club team of its own, and when
Paul enrolled in the fall of 1984,
he jumped at the opportunity to
play and took to the sport quickly.
Paul ultimately left Albion after
two years due to academic struggles
and returned to work in Ann Arbor
from 1986 to 1990, taking classes
at Washtenaw Community Col-
lege while he regained his bearings.
Meanwhile, Paul kept up with
lacrosse by playing for Michigan’s
club team. At the time, non-stu-
dents were allowed to play for the
University’s club sports teams, so
the roster was mostly made up of
young Ann Arbor residents like
Paul, as well as graduate students.
DiGiovanni, who became Michi-
gan’s full-time head coach a year prior
to Paul’s arrival, was committed to
changing the tone of the program by
upping the level of accountability and
enlisting undergraduates who would
bring it to new heights. As a three-
year captain during this period, Paul
served as a key leader who set the
bar for the newer, younger players.
“Like any older player, (I was)
just at that time leading by show-
ing them what it took to be good at
what you do,” Paul said. “It was try-
ing to do things the right way and
hoping that others would follow.”
After a year-long stint with the
Detroit Turbos of the Major Indoor
Lacrosse League (rebranded as
the National Lacrosse League in
1997), Paul returned to Michigan
in 1992, this time as an admit-
ted student, where he finished his
bachelor’s degree and played one
last season with the Wolverines.
Following
graduation,
Paul
secured a fundraising position in
the Michigan athletic department,
which he held for four years before
transitioning to an adjacent role in
the university’s College of Litera-
ture, Science & the Arts. For the first
time in a while, things were steady
for Paul. He had recently married
his wife, Lisa, was happily settled in
the town he grew up in and had a job
working for an institution he loved.
It appeared as if he was content. But
then an opportunity came knocking.
After
serving
as
Michigan’s
head coach for 12 years and lead-
ing the Wolverines to an impres-
sive
198-54
record,
DiGiovanni
retired in 1997. The team’s rising
seniors asked Paul to fill the void
for the upcoming 1998 season.
Paul had some coaching experi-
ence, but not a ton. Back in 1990, Pio-
neer finally added a lacrosse program,
six years after Paul’s original plea, and
appointed DiGiovanni to the helm
while he kept his post at Michigan.
Helping his coach out, Paul acted as
the Pioneers’ junior varsity coach
and assistant varsity coach when he
was still playing for the Wolverines.
His involvement had waned since he
graduated from Michigan, though.
Cautiously, Paul agreed to the
seniors’ request under the assumption
that his affiliation with the position
would be temporary and part time.
A year later, Paul found himself quit-
ting his office job in LSA to become
the Wolverines’ full-time head coach.
“I just had such a great time doing
it and I had this vision for making
it more and more,” Paul said. “I just
wanted to make the club program
as good as it could be. So it came to a
point where I was devoting so much
time to that, my regular work was
suffering and I had to make a choice.
And I just liked (coaching) more.”
As it did for him as a player, Mich-
igan lacrosse — the brotherhood,
the endless grind, the experience
and camaraderie of it all — had cap-
tured his heart as a coach. And it
wouldn’t let go for quite some time.
***
As it turned out, Paul was the
perfect person to take the reins from
DiGiovanni. For Paul, growing up
in Ann Arbor and surrounded by
the University gave him an utmost
reverence for the Block “M” and the
values of hard work, determination
and enthusiasm that he felt it rep-
resented. His desire to showcase
Michigan in its purest form culmi-
nated in a rich intensity and passion
that he brought to the program from
the get-go. And in terms of building
a strong team culture, Paul made
sure that a similar mindset mani-
fested itself in his players, his staff
and even his eventual successor.
“I think when you have some-
one who’s lived it their entire life
like coach Paul, he understood what
Michigan was,” current Wolverines’
head coach Kevin Conry said. “It was
ingrained in our program, so that
the guys came in and they under-
stood, although we are relatively
young as a program, this universi-
ty — this athletic department — has
been around for so long and has had
so many legends come through it.”
Upon taking the head coaching
role, everything Paul had — money,
time and energy — went towards
Michigan club lacrosse. He never
took a paycheck, even forgoing the
proceeds from a youth lacrosse
camp he ran every summer, instead
putting all of his meager club sports
coach earnings back into the team.
This was not without sacrifice,
not only for Paul, but also for Lisa,
whose income the newlywed cou-
ple was solely relying on to get by.
On
the
lacrosse
field,
such
immense commitment paid off. From
1998 to 2006, he led the Wolverines
to a compelling 152-37 record. Mich-
igan was among the best teams in the
Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Associa-
tion, the highest division of collegiate
club lacrosse, making its way to the
MCLA Tournaments quarterfinals
eight of the nine seasons and advanc-
ing as far as the semifinals in 2005.
In 2007, though, the fourth-seed-
ed Wolverines suffered a major upset
when they were blown out by No. 13
seed Northeastern in the first round
of the MCLA Tournament, 15-4.
The loss shocked Paul and his
players’ systems. “We had never
lost in the first round,” Paul said.
But after nearly a decade of glid-
ing at an above-average — yet not
quite championship-caliber — level
of play, the loss offered a silver lin-
ing. It allowed Michigan to step
back, evaluate its progress as a
program thus far and understand
what it would take to climb the next
rung on the ladder to excellence.
“We were at this crossroads,”
Paul said. “We had always been
this team that was highly ranked
but never got it done. When you’re
doing that year after year after year,
that’s culture. And so we knew we
kinda had to blow everything up and
completely rethink the culture if we
were gonna make the next step.”
That offseason, Paul met with
the rising seniors to discuss the
future trajectory of the program.
He had plans to make some big
changes, mostly elevating the level
of intensity and overall commit-
ment, but he was worried that his
ambitions did not match his players.
“I know they wanted to win,
but there’s a big price to pay to do
that, especially at the club level
where you’re paying to play and
there
aren’t
those
expectations
and
accountability,”
Paul
said.
But
the
seniors
accepted
Paul’s
chal-
lenge. In that moment, they bought
in and set forth to change course.
“We were building it to be the
best club program ever,” Paul said.
“That’s what we wanted to be.”
***
While it may seem frivolous for a
coach and group of players to declare
that they are suddenly going to rise
to the top of the ranks of their sport,
that sort of confidence made all the
difference for incoming freshmen like
Trevor Yealy prior to the 2008 season.
Although Yealy’s decision to attend
Michigan was primarily driven by
his interest in the University’s aero-
nautical engineering program, as
someone who was deciding wheth-
er to play Division I or club lacrosse
in college, he was drawn to the fact
that the Wolverines took themselves
seriously despite being a club team.
“I think it was those guys kinda
setting the tone on how this pro-
gram was going to be run and how,
from a player perspective, we were
going to conduct ourselves,” Yealy
said. “(Those guys took) a step for-
ward so that when my class (got)
to Ann Arbor freshman year, we
got a group of seniors who fully
bought in and committed and had
gotten the kids who were already
there, the sophomores and juniors,
fully bought in and committed.
“I didn’t really know any other way
at Michigan aside from being fully
bought in and committed to the vision
of being an excellent program, because
those seniors set that foundation.”
A new standard had been codified.
In order to elevate its game,
Michigan trained as if it were a var-
sity program, holding early morning
lifting sessions and night practices
four days a week in preparation for
games on weekends. With a $1 mil-
lion annual budget, a benefit of addi-
tional sponsorships and donations
the Wolverines had recently received,
they were fortunate enough to have
the financial bandwidth to do so.
“As a club team we practiced
with incredible tempo,” Paul said.
“I mean, our practices were brutal.”
Added Yealy: “This was not your
traditional club sport, where maybe
you go play for a couple hours and
then roll out a keg onto the field after.
It was treated very seriously, very
much like a varsity sport. If you did not
abide by the team rules and whatnot,
that was it, you were off the team.”
To get some coaching help, Paul
brought in Ken Broschart — an old
friend who had previously run a suc-
cessful club program of his own at
Arizona. According to Paul, as a gritty
blue-collar Long Islander, Broschart
brought a unique blend of tough-
ness and lacrosse intelligence that
added positive value to the team, as
well as Paul’s own coaching abilities.
Michigan reaped the benefits
of its metamorphosis immediately.
In 2008, the Wolverines went
undefeated in the regular season,
something no other MCLA team
had ever done before. Entering as
the No. 1 seed in the MCLA Tour-
nament, Michigan tore through
its opponents in the early rounds
before defeating No. 2 Chapman
in the championship game, 14-11,
to secure its first MCLA title.
The Wolverines continued their
reign into 2009 and 2010, notch-
ing a cumulative 38-1 record over
that stretch en route to their sec-
ond-
and
third-straight
titles.
What
Michigan
accomplished
over such a brief period was
nothing short of history. For the
majority of these three years, the
Wolverines sat untouched at No. 1
in the MCLA rankings. Spanning
from the end of the 2007 season to
the midpoint of 2010, the Wolver-
ines won 50 consecutive games.
Just as Paul and his seniors had
set out to do in the summer of 2007,
Michigan had quickly become one
of the best club programs ever, and
it showed little signs of wavering
anytime soon. Division I coaches
glanced at the Wolverines and were
utterly impressed with what Paul
had built, while club coaches des-
perately tried to figure out how to
emulate it. For players like Yealy,
who were now wrapping up their
junior years, winning was the norm.
It appeared, once again, as if Paul
was content. “I never really had long-
term goals for the program,” Paul said.
“When we were changing the culture
of the club program, it wasn’t neces-
sarily about winning national cham-
pionships. It certainly wasn’t about
becoming varsity. It was just about
being really excellent and trying to fig-
ure out how to do that better the next
day than we did that day. That was it.”
But
then,
once
again,
an
opportunity
came
knocking.
***
While
Paul
had
certainly
dreamed and talked of his program
one day turning Division I, it was
never a priority for him. He knew
the answer would always be no.
“I knew (then-Michigan athletic
director) Bill Martin pretty well, and
I didn’t bug him about wanting to be
varsity, because I knew what he’d say
and I didn’t want to lose his support
for what we were doing,” Paul said.
“I knew bugging him about varsity
would just piss him off, so I didn’t.
I thought we’d never be varsity.”
Added Yealy: “Previous athletic
directors had no interest. Rightful-
ly so, big football, basketball, hock-
ey school, they (had) their time
plenty spent dealing with those
sports, so adding lacrosse prob-
ably wasn’t high on their radar.”
As a result, Paul just focused
on building the best possible club
team that he could, so in the event
that, one day, should his circum-
stances change, he was ready.
That day had come. On Jan. 5, 2010,
then-Michigan president Mary Sue
Coleman announced that Dave Bran-
don would serve as the University’s
next athletic director following the
retirement of Martin, who had served
in the role for the previous 10 years.
As the former CEO of Domino’s
and a Wolverines’ football alum,
Brandon came to the Michigan ath-
letic department with an entrepre-
neurial spirit and sense of school
pride that propelled him through-
out his tenure from 2010 to 2014.
Paul thought it was worth a shot
to send a proposal to the athletic
department detailing why Michigan
club lacrosse should be promoted to
varsity status. If anyone was going
to take a chance on a new, excit-
ing opportunity, it was Brandon.
Fortunately for Paul, the stars
were aligned in his favor. At the
time, lacrosse was the fastest grow-
ing sport in the country, so invest-
ing in a Division I program would
ensure that an athletic powerhouse
like Michigan was a part of the latest
and greatest wave in sports. Paul’s
squad had also clearly proven itself
to be the best club program in the
country at the time, so it made sense
for the Wolverines to want to take
the next step at the varsity level.
Paul
was
still
surprised,
though, when Brandon respond-
ed positively to the proposal.
“He was like, ‘I already know I
want to do this, I just don’t know
if I can,’ ” Paul said. “He needed
a few months to figure it out and
then came back to me and said, ‘If
we can get over all the hurdles that
the University is going to put in
front of us, we’re gonna do this.’ ”
To make Paul’s vision a reali-
ty, he and Brandon would have to
fundraise $5 million. The quanti-
ty of money was merely symbolic;
$5 million doesn’t go very far for a
modern Big Ten athletic program
in terms of scholarships, facilities
and equipment, but University
officials wanted to see some com-
mitment and have some cushion
before approving the promotion.
While Brandon and the athletic
department primarily handled the
accounting and logistics behind
fundraising, Paul sold the idea. Not
only did he have experience work-
ing with donors from his old work
in the athletic department and LSA,
he was also still quite close with
club alumni, who he knew would
be
interested
in
contributing.
FILE PHOTO/Daily
In his 20 years as its coach, John Paul laid the foundation for the Michigan lacrosse program which is celebrating its 10th season this year.
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