From the podcast: Pete Toner on the pathway to Gettysburg

Gettysburg head coach Pete Toner (Kennebunk, Maine) joins the "Chasing The Goal" podcast this week. (Courtesy)

On this week’s episode of New England Lacrosse Journal’s “Chasing The Goal” podcast, hosts Kyle Devitte and Jack Piatelli were joined by Gettysburg head coach Pete Toner.

Toner, a New England native, served as an assistant coach at Penn State for over a decade before taking over the Gettysburg program last season.

After spending the previous 11 years at Penn State, where he oversaw the team’s defensive strategy and coordinated recruitment, the Springfield College graduate and former head coach at Wheaton College returned to his Division 3 origins as Gettysburg’s fourth head coach since 1969.

Toner (Kennebunk, Maine) led the Bullets to a 14-8 overall record and a 6-2 record in conference play in his first season as a head coach in 2022. With a roster full of New England natives and a deep knowledge of the game, Toner enters his second season poised to challenge for the Centennial Conference title.

The full podcast can be accessed below and is available on all major platforms. If you enjoy it please leave a rating and a review.

Jack Piatelli: You’ve been able to draw some players from top programs in Massachusetts like Hingham, Lincoln-Sudbury, Medfield, Tabor Academy, as well as Connecticut with Hotchkiss, Avon (Old Farms). What does that say about Gettysburg and the tradition and the players that you’re drawing?

Pete Toner: I was talking to Pete Sessa — I know, Springfield guy — who I recruited to Springfield and then tried to recruit to Wheaton when I left Springfield. He was a great player at Springfield and he said, “Coach, don’t you remember what all the New England kids wanted? They wanted Gettysburg, they wanted Hampton-Sydney, they wanted (Washington and Less). They all wanted to go south.”

I never really thought of recruiting all these kids, but it is a good fit. I mean, a lot of those kids fit the academic profile, they fit the lacrosse profile, they fit the financial profile … it makes sense. They go to really good high schools; they’re getting great high school educations. And they like to go to a great college opportunity as well. A lot of those kids just fit for us.

You can definitely draw up in the New England prep schools, New England public schools. We’ve got a bunch on our roster. They’ve had them over the course of time, and so they’re some of our best players and some of our best incoming recruits, which we’re really excited about. 

Kyle Devitte: I think a lot of people don’t understand that if you’re trying to make your full-time job lacrosse, you basically have to say goodbye to people starting February. I’ll see you June 1. That’s being a little dramatic. But I do that. I’m in-season and part of that is the business and the attention that you have to give to be successful, right? And being a D-1 assistant is probably — I don’t want to say thankless because there are a lot of jobs that are more thankless than that in the world — but in lacrosse, Division 1 assistants are on the road all year. How many days a year are you on the road if you’re D-1 assistant? 200?

PT: I mean, you’re out there every day in the summer. In all the winter and the fall, recruiting. You’re doing the winter camps and over the break, we’re supposed to be enjoying a dead period. But you’re working so you can still do it. You have got to be out there because your opponents are out there. And that’s just the way it goes.

If you’re 40 or 41 or 42 with three young kids, you’re different than the 25-year-old who’s an assistant at whatever other school and doesn’t have a kid, doesn’t have any kids, doesn’t have a wife; he’s a young guy running around. He’s like, “This is great — I’ll work everything.” He makes money, goes to new cities, and meets new people.

Well, I’m in a different spot than you in my life, so that doesn’t work for me anymore, if I want to stay married anyway. So it is definitely a different mindset. The older that you get, you’ve still got to get out there work, you’ve still got to go out there and evaluate. I go out and watch every single kid we bring to campus. I make sure I see them in person multiple times.

We’re not just bringing kids out here to bring them out here. We’re not over-recruiting. We’re being very intentional with it.  That’s kind of the way we’re doing things now, it’s just that the timeline is different than what it was at Penn State. 

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