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May 2, 2009 E-MAIL PRINT

Cavalier approach

by Kevin Henkin/

Most 8-year-old kids from suburban Boston tend to sport a Red Sox hat. Or maybe one for the Bruins or the Patriots, just to shake things up a bit. In his childhood in Burlington, Mass., Chad Gaudet chose to wear a bright orange University of Virginia lacrosse hat. It would serve as a premonition of sorts or perhaps mark the beginning of a long and winding path that would eventually lead him to the gates of UVA’s Klöckner Stadium.

In high school, Gaudet was a captain of the lacrosse, football and basketball teams at Middlesex School in Concord, Mass. It was football, however, for which he was recruited at Dartmouth College. In his freshman year as the featured running back, Gaudet led the Big Green in rushing with 389 yards. Then, in his first carry in the season opener of his sophomore year, he took a helmet to the knee. The collision caused a tibia plateau fracture that required an inserted pin and bone graft and effectively ended his promising football career.

Following surgery and a year of grueling physical therapy, Gaudet recovered the full use of his leg. A return to football was out of the question because of the high risk of re-injury, so Gaudet instead picked up a stick, got back into game shape and joined the Dartmouth lacrosse team in January 2007.

That spring, Gaudet began playing as a short-stick middie but was eventually shifted to a long-stick defender who specialized in faceoffs. Spotting some special qualities in Gaudet, Dartmouth assistant coach Andy Towers took him under his wing and became an attentive mentor to the blossoming player.

Said Towers: “He is as physically gifted as they come, a very high-end athlete. But as high-end of an athlete as he is, I think he’s even more mentally tough and takes a ton of pride in making sure that his effective responsibilities to the team and the program are handled to the fullest every time.

“He’s one of my most favorite players that I’ve had the pleasure of coaching. When a kid brings that much pride in himself and is a team-first guy, it’s hard as a coach to not truly appreciate that. You get a handful of guys like that in your career. In my 17 years of coaching, I’ve only had a handful of guys who bring that commitment in all phases to the program as Chad has done.”

At the end of fall practice during his senior season at Dartmouth, Gaudet was voted as a captain by his teammates and had assumed primary faceoff duties for the team.

Over the course of the ensuing spring season, Gaudet became one of the best faceoff players in the Ivy League and, according to some, in Division 1 overall.

“In my opinion, he was arguably the best in the country,” Towers said. “[Last year], the Ivy League had five of the top seven or eight guys in the country at faceoffs, and he dominated all of them over the last half of the season.”

As the season drew to a close last spring, Gaudet began to consider his future, both in terms of lacrosse and life in general. He was on schedule to complete his classes at Dartmouth and earn his undergraduate degree, but he had an extra year of eligibility left to play lacrosse. It was at an away game at the University of Virginia that an unexpected option presented itself.

During a Senior Day ceremony held for the graduating Virginia players, Gaudet became aware that several were coming back to play their final year of eligibility via enrollment in the school’s one-year program for a master’s degree in commerce. The degree intrigued Gaudet, as did the idea of playing Division 1 lacrosse for another year, especially for such a vaunted program as Virginia’s. After considering the matter at length, Gaudet reached out to legendary Virginia coach Dom Starsia (who coached Towers at Brown University in the early 1990s) to explore the possibility of securing a spot on the Virginia team. With no guarantees, Gaudet was invited to come in the next fall to take his best shot.

Recalled Starsia: “We’d seen him face off on tape a little bit and I thought he had a chance to help us, but I wasn’t sure. Then he came in the fall and almost from the first day he certainly made a strong impression on the program and impressed everybody with his work ethic and his personality. He was just a great guy to have around the program. Even at the end of fall lacrosse, you could see that there was a chance he was going to help us, but I still wasn’t quite sure what it all meant.

“We’d never had a kid face off with a long pole before, but when we came back in January in our first preseason scrimmage at Navy, I think he was 10 for 10 facing off, and I think we even had a couple of substitution violations because we didn’t know what the heck we were doing with a long pole out there facing off. But, at the end of that day we all felt we had to figure out how we were going to work this kid in there because he was definitely facing off for us. It was soon thereafter that he established himself as our key faceoff guy for the year.”

In terms of what the 6-foot, 201-pound Gaudet has added to the Cavaliers this season, Starsia said, “He’s a tough kid. I described him to somebody the other day as a taciturn New Englander. He doesn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve. He’s a quiet guy but he’s just a really nice kid. I made a joke at one point earlier in the season when he had a couple of big games for us early and I said to my team, ‘Fellas are we going to let an Ivy Leaguer be the toughest guy on our team?’ Because the truth is, he may be. He’s done a good job facing off, but even more than that, he’s been a great kid to have around. It’s been a win-win from every angle that I can imagine.”

Gaudet’s father, Chuck, a football player at the University of Pennsylvania during his undergraduate days, identified some other aspects of his son’s game worth noting. “Even when he doesn’t win the faceoff completely, he creates a lot of chaos out there,” Chuck said. “Even when he gets beat, he has a very good success rate of picking up his player and creating an opportunity for Virginia to go on the offensive.”

From Day 1, Gaudet has soaked in the experience of playing for Starsia, a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

“It’s been amazing,” the 24-year-old Gaudet said. “He’s probably forgotten more lacrosse than I’ll ever know. It’s really been an honor to play for him, especially with all the history surrounding the program.”

Virginia has added to that history this year, spending much of the season ranked No. 1 in the nation and taking a 13-2 record into the NCAA tournament.

Said Gaudet: “It’s incredible just walking into the locker room every day and seeing the pictures of championship teams from the past. It’s a great honor. Getting to play on Klöckner as your home field is pretty unbelievable, definitely one of the coolest places to play in the country. It’s pretty inspirational.”