How to Build a Winning Team Culture in HS Sports (2022): Part 8

How/Why is it that some areas of the country become hotbeds for particular sports and others do not? Why is Minnesota so dominant in high school hockey? Why is Texas the state we think of when we discuss high school football? Why are Pennsylvania and Ohio so dominant in wrestling year after year? When we think of Lacrosse we think of New York and Maryland, in particular the Baltimore area.

It seems the right blend of several different factors. Looking at it from the perspective of lacrosse in Maryland, the first thing we can see is a rich tradition. Lacrosse made its first appearance in Maryland when team members of the Baltimore Athletic Club went to Newport, Rhode Island for a track meet in 1878. They saw people playing a game in which they were throwing a ball with these sticks that had nets on the end.

Within 5 years, Johns Hopkins would become the 3^rd college to field a college lacrosse team.

1868 – Mohawk Lacrosse Club starts in Troy New York

1877 – New York University Starts 1st college lacrosse team

1877 – Manhattan College Starts 2nd college lacrosse team

1878 – Baltimore Athletic Club starts lacrosse team

1883 – Johns Hopkins fields its first lacrosse team

By the 1920’s, with the success of the local college programs and positive media coverage, Lacrosse had grown to become quite popular in the Baltimore area. With college teams including Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland, and The Naval Academy, former players were now coming back to coach lacrosse on the high school level. The foundation for a national “hotbed” for Lacrosse was being built.

In 1929 Boys Latin started their storied program. More high school programs began popping up soon after. With the increased popularity at the high school level, the level of play continued to improve at the college level as well. To the point where Johns Hopkins has won 44 National Championships in the sport, while Maryland, Loyola, The Naval Academy, and Towson have all made their mark as national contenders and champions.

The Boys Latin school has since moved from its original location to its 42 acre campus in Roland Park, Baltimore, but their tradition for lacrosse excellence has remained. Since head coach Bob Shriver took over in 1980, the team has been ranked #1 nationally on 5 occasions (1985, 1988, 1997, 2006, and 2014), won six league championships making the title game 15 times, while compiling over 500 wins, many of which came against some of the top teams in the country. You see, the league in which Boys Latin plays in consists of some of the best teams in the country. Mcdonough, Calvert Hall, Severn Park, Gilman, St. Pauls, and more have all been top #25 in the country through the years, with some climbing to #1.

That is the one word Coach Bob Shriver used to describe the culture of the Boys Latin Lacrosse team. “If you went back historically, going back to the guy I was an assistant coach for, he emphatically refused not to push the kids to give everything they had” recalls Shriver, “I clearly think if you were to talk to teams we competed against, Boys Latin has always been a tough out. They know when they play Boys Latin, they may be better, just as skilled, etc, but you are going to have to fight with everything you have.”

Shriver believes “Life is all about perspective. I have a handicapped son who has downs syndrome. This has given me an incredible perspective on life and greater appreciation for what we have. We just finished playing a huge game on Friday. It was our Homecoming game. We are 37-1 over the past two years. The only loss was a championship game to this team that we are playing Friday, Loyola. Homecoming win would be huge. This is a huge game as our league is generally considered the best league in the country.

Going into the final league games tomorrow, 4 of us are tied for 1^st. We are playing Saint Paul; if we win, we will be the number one seed, if lose will be 5^th seed.

This game has huge importance.In between hospital visits with my son, I am just trying to sort through the approach to the game. Everything changes in life in the blink of an eye. Take every day for the joy and pleasure it should be.

I have always tried to sort of remove the personal part, I will bring it back to the perspective of sports. How sports mirror life. It is one of the great joys of sport; the risk of agony of defeat and the chance for the thrill of victory. Seeing my son recover from the depths is in many respects an incredible thrill and the opportunity to be put in a growth situation.”

“There is a lot of mutuality in those two terms” expresses Shriver, “You are not given those just because you are the CEO, coach, or boss; you have to earn those. I think in many ways, I get their respect and trust, some of it is probably because I am an old bastard who has been doing it a long time. An 18 year-old trusts your experience.

We are a small private school. We are the smallest of the 7-10 private schools we play. Our senior class has about 70 kids. We are playing much larger schools. We are very small, and established, and have been playing lacrosse here for over 80 years.

Lacrosse is changing in the modern era. The plastic stick came in the 70’s, it really made lacrosse an easier game to pick up. The stick was balanced and good for left and right hand. There was not the long, long time you needed to learn to use the wooden stick.

In the modern era, we have maintained a level of competitiveness given our size. This is part of the culture here. The kids today, know one of the traditions playing lacrosse at Boys Latin is to try to maintain and keep the culture and tradition.

When I started at Boys Latin, Division I was just emerging, Division 3 would not be starting for a while. We played a good quality schedule against some big schools. I played baseball growing up. I had to play lacrosse in high school as baseball was not there in the spring. When I came out of school, I thought I was going to be teaching right out of school at Boys Latin. I ended up not getting the job, I putzed around and stayed involved with the school, then they had a part time position for lacrosse coach open up. I started coaching as an assistant, under Ridge Warfield, His passion rubbed off on me dramatically. I clearly tried to bring Ridges passion to what I was doing when I took over as head coach.

I have been unbelievably lucky to teach to some really great people. I have been lucky to work with some incredibly knowledgeable assistant coaches. We have a remarkable amount of fun as a staff.

As time goes on you think that your workload is going to decrease, but it increases exponentially. At Boys Latin, many of the boys want to play college Lacrosse. There is a huge off-season element, where the boys travel all over for lacrosse. We have a program that our program puts out. It is a program for a program. Kids and coaches always want to ask me questions and I keep myself as open as possible and communicate back with people.

The admissions process is a huge part of our program here as well. It requires a lot of work. We work hard to maintain the level of competitiveness. There are a couple things that happen. Our kids go on to college; a lot of this has to do with our league in general. The kids learn very quickly that you are not going to be successful unless you buckle up the chin strap and work. Not so much from the technical perspective, but the competitive perspective. A lot of this comes from our league itself.

We have had great transfer success of sending players on to college. We have had multiple stop playing in college because their experience was not a joyful. My son who went to Boys Latin and played lacrosse, is now in his fourth year under one of Mike Messere’s former players at Penn State.” 

“There are little quirks that we have developed over the years” shares Shriver. The coach continues “You can’t take your sweatpants off until May 1^st. When I was in college, I always wore my sweats to warm up my legs. This is just one of our little quirks.

Be on time, be responsible to your teammates. For as many years as I have coached, we always talk about responsibly and behavior on Friday afternoons. Some of those things are things that have been part of the program for as long as I have been around. We have a spring break trip. We travel to some neat places and done some neat things. But the kids understand these privileges are earned, and they must maintain responsibility and strong character behavior while we travel.

We try to play as many outliers as we can. Players from other areas, other states, different teams from all over. We have a very competitive early season schedule. We try to schedule tough teams from as many different areas as we can in the beginning of season. We are going through a very different exposure in our pre-league season. This helps to prepare us for the challenges that lie ahead when we get into our league games.

You are going to work hard, but everybody works hard. If you establish a culture that you are going to work hard and be pushed a little physically and mentally, you know that at the end of the day, you are better prepared and will be competitive.”

“I am probably a little bit of both” says Shriver, “I don’t consider myself an incredible teacher of the game. That is why it is critical to have great assistant coaches. You have to allow guys to do their job and allow them to be invested in the job. I think it is really important that we have enough guys that can teach the game. My job is to kind of manage and oversee it.

No matter how many times you work with people, over time we see the same things, we interpret the kids the same way as coaches. We have been very good at being able to evaluate what is going on, whether mental, physical, or just making mistakes. We generally see the same things as a coaching staff.

We work quite a bit on character development. I try to communicate the best I can with the kids while they are standing there. Our school is a K-12 school. I have very little contact with the young kids. It can be difficult to get a little closer to the kids. Am I close to the kids as they move through the system, of course? My attitudes and relationship changes because you get to know them a little better. I don’t necessarily get close to the younger kids as I evolve with the older kids.

It is the older kids’ responsibility to let the younger kids know when Coach is being hard, that is just the way it is as he is trying to help them become better players and better people.”

On entitlement, Shriver expresses “Sometimes that rears its head in a private school setting. Parents are paying money. There are kids at every college or private high school that are getting financial assistance. Sometimes, entitlement just rears its head. But nobody is entitled to play on a lacrosse field because of what they paid or where they came from. You are entitled to play because of what you do right now; you are entitled to play because you have earned the right to play.

Does this create some issues, yes? The best way to try to handle this is to be as honest as you can. If you, the athlete, have an issue, come and see us, the coaches, first. If that does not work, we have no problem with parents calling me. We don’t want to have people up in the stands griping. Does it happen? Absolutely. We try to nip it in the bud. We want this to be a community that is supporting one another.

This has taken me a while to figure out. I have clearly worked very hard on when talk to a kid. I have also realized it is better to have somebody else present when you are talking with a kid.”

“In some programs and with some coaches, the kids are always coming back. Does that happen here? Sure, it does. I just got a text from a kid I coached my very first year. This is my last year, I am retiring. He sent me the most heartfelt message about the impact I had on him back then.

I think what they appreciate is that there has been a lot of fun stuff this year. I personally do not want the fact that it is my last year to be the issue. We played my last home game. Somebody asked what it was like, and I said it was more special for the seniors playing on the field that day. It is not about you the coach; it is about those kids out there on that field. We emphatically make sure they realize this year’s team is your team.

In Jay Bilas’ book Toughness, Coach K won a title one year and he was defending the title the next year. He said, look you guys, we are not defending anything this year. That was last year’s team. We are aiming to win one on our own with this year’s team. Let’s concentrate on our season and the next championship.

You can’t win two games in a row. You win one game in a row twice. You can’t practice 500 shots 1 time; you need to practice 1 shot 500 times. Kids are better at being in the moment than we are. Half of them don’t have an idea as to what they are doing tonight or tomorrow.

From a coaching perspective, the kids that are put in situations to be successful have the finances to play the game. Lacrosse is an expensive game to play. Just to outfit a kid may cost $800. Youth lacrosse has grown, and clubs are taking over. It has become an extremely expensive game.

On the flipside, while the game is growing like crazy, it is hard not to love it. People inevitably fall in love with the sport and find a way to play. It still has a monetary component due to the expenses needed to play.

We are finding more and more outlier kids playing the game now. One of the reasons Mike Messere has been so successful is he has worked in a town where all the kids come up through the West Genesee rec program. They are getting top notch coaching and equipment right on through to high school” shares Shriver.

“If you are going to do it, be a part of a team, Baltimore is a huge lacrosse area. There are 3 colleges outside of us, Loyola, Johns Hopkins, etc, and 5 of the finest high school programs in the country are in that same area. It is crazy the amount of quality lacrosse here. The good news is everybody loves lacrosse and the bad news is everybody loves lacrosse. People here take lacrosse very seriously. This is like Texas with football and Minnesota with Hockey.

There is a huge responsibility if you are going to be in this sport. The responsibility of wearing the jersey is really big. I think all that plays into the culture and what you are trying to do with the kids” believes Shriver.  

“I guess we will find out tomorrow” shares Coach Shriver, “We found out the other day. We had one face off kid face off 27 times. You do it 27 times that is work. That kid handled that component very well. We practice a lot on Sundays. Our best defenseman had his arm in a sling. He broke his collarbone in the game on Friday and kept playing through it. It looks like he is done for the season. Typically, when these kids are in adverse situations, they respond very, very quickly. I am going to guess we are going to get a great effort tomorrow. What I have found, is how many teams handle adversity once, but to continue to handle it, and sustain that, is what leads to continued success. Will we be able to continue with this effort after tomorrow? I certainly think so. It is all about perspective.”

For more Building A Winning Culture in Team Sports be sure to check out our other blog posts or pick up a copy of the book Building A Winning Culture in High School Sports….and Beyond.