From the podcast: Coach Kevin Warnock of Suffield Academy

This podcast is sponsored by the University of Nebraska High School and the NCAA. For more information on UNHS, visit highschool.nebraska.edu/nelj. For more information on the NCAA championships, visit https://www.ncaatickets.com/sport/mens-lacrosse.

Kyle Devitte: One of the things I’ve noticed covering preps, especially this year, is that there aren’t a lot of teams that have a JV component to them. So, you have to do a lot of internal development yourself as the head coach as well as the rest of your staff. How do you approach that? And you have a lot of guys coming in to play other sports as well. What’s your philosophy on that? How do you take on that challenge? 

Kevin Warnock: It’s tough. Our seasons are shorter. We’re an eight- or nine-week season once we cut it down and really kind of get to the nitty-gritty. So we’ve been doing some stuff this fall. We did groups of three in the preseason in the fall, early morning before school. We’d get up and get on the turf and then during the winter, we would play indoor. We play box, five on five, in our field house.

So, there are always ways to find the time. But you’re losing a football or a soccer kid because that’s their sport or that’s the sport they’re playing in the fall. We try to craft things where we’re getting sticks in our guys’ hands more often. That’s also another culture shift that we’re working on is continuing to see lacrosse on our campus. That hasn’t been kind of a prominent aspect here for a little while. I think in the early 2010s through about 2018, (the previous coach) did a good job here with our program. And they were super competitive in about 2018. Then we hit a little speed bump. But building that back up with an administration that’s excited and ready to help us … the sky’s the limit.

Jack Piatelli: How far away do you think your program is from competing for a conference championship? 

KW: Not far, Jack. I think that’s a great question. And I think it’s it’s something that we all want to kind of know that we can flip that switch and turn it over. I think we lost a couple of close games this year. We weren’t understanding where we were as a program and what jobs we needed to do as individuals. We just played Chester Academy the other day, and that was a 7-6 game. Great game. But we hurt ourselves a lot. We made some mistakes that negatively impacted the game.

But I think at this moment, I think you bring in the right kids and you continue to embrace the kids that are here. And we’re not far off. I think this league is very competitive. Like I said, with those teams that I listed earlier, we’re close in region to a lot of Founders League teams. And I want to play those guys. I think there’s there’s no benefit to not playing them. We need to get on their fields and we need to be able to compete at that level. Westminster’s right down the road, as is Loomis (Chaffee).

So we’re in a great spot to be very successful here. And I don’t think we’re that far off.