Story behind Team USA loss

The ONE man responsible for team Canada’s 8-5 win. It’s not who you think.

When Bill Tierney divulged the secrets of his slide-and-recover Princeton defense to a packed coaching convention in the late nineties, he set in motion the events that, a decade and a half later, created this particular game.

The current team USA long poles and middies—through no fault of their own—are part of a generation that spent their formative years in the game playing for youth/middle school/high school coaches all imitating BT’s team defense. His system was beautifully simple, too simple (the real problem being even youth lax coaches could comprehend it), and every whiteboard had those imaginary field lines drawn on it. And from every sideline came calls of: “No Sweep”, “Turn ‘em back”, “No topside”.

Even in youth lacrosse, individual fundamentals were eschewed for slide-and-recover team concepts. Long poles were never left on an island and told to take the ball away.  At an age when kids should have been learning and developing checks, pushing their creativity, trying and failing to mimic Ric Beardsley, Dave Pietramala—they were learning to be individually conservative in a team system.

Some attribute the disappearance of the take-away defender to the offset head and the offense advantage it created. But the true paradigm shift in coaching philosophy came from Bill Tierney. His way was seen as THE way to play defense. Coaches at all levels were so excited to learn this system, so excited to implement it.

Then what does Bill Tierney do? Sit back and watch? No, invests in box lacrosse and maple syrup. He leaves the relatively Canadian-free Ivy League for Denver. He imports players from north of the border where the Princeton defense was not a thing in their box games. And he uses them to take advantage of the generation of defensemen he’s created.

And when the World Games come to Denver, and the Canadians are holding on to the ball, and the US needs to press, they find their best take away defender is on the sidelines in khakis, his playing days long gone.

Note: No actual research was done in writing this piece.