From the podcast: Trinity coach Jason Tarnow on making NESCAC inroads

Jason Tarnow is beginning his seventh year as the head coach at Trinity College. (Courtesy)

On this week’s episode of New England Lacrosse Journal’s “Chasing The Goal” podcast, hosts Kyle Devitte and Jack Piatelli talk with Trinity College head coach Jason Tarnow.

Tarnow played his college lacrosse at Michigan State and then at Salisbury University. He finished his career ranked in the top 10 in saves at both programs before embarking on a coaching career that spans a number of schools at the Division 3 level.

An assistant at Butler University in the early 2000s, Tarnow honed his coaching craft at the D-1 level before moving on to become a head coach in D-3. He was the head coach at the College of Wooster for nine seasons before leaving to launch the men’s program at Baldwin-Wallace.

He has been the head coach at Trinity for the last six seasons. Last spring, he guided the Bantams to the NESCAC quarterfinals for the first time since his postseason run in 2019. The Bantams are 28-28 over the last five seasons after going 35-70 over the previous seven springs.

Watch the full podcast below on YouTube. It’s also available on all major podcast platforms. If you enjoy it, please leave a rating and a review. Watch more episodes on the Chasing the Goal podcast channel.

Here are some excerpts from the pod.

Jack Piatelli: Heading into this year, having the success you had last year, what will be the main factor for competing in the NESCAC? 

Jason Tarnow: That’s a great question. I think for us it’s continuing to age because we had a lot of sophomores, juniors and freshmen playing last year. We brought in four transfers, three from the Division 1 ranks, that we feel are going to be very good. And so getting those guys to mesh will be a challenge, especially for us. We are allowed fall ball this year for the first time in the NESCAC, but it’s only 10 practices, so that’s only going to be 10 practices as a staff that we have out there to kind of get these guys to mesh with the team.

And I know they will. Personality-wise and because of who they are. But just that playing chemistry, I think, is going to take a little time, you know? So like anything in our league, you’ve got to have goaltending, right? I mean, you need it everywhere in lacrosse. But in this league, because of the amount of possessions that happen, how fast people play, the face-offs and the goaltending are paramount. And I think those are areas that we’re going to spend a lot of time focused this fall.

Kyle Devitte: Just looking at your roster, I mean, it’s pretty diverse. You’ve got a lot of kids from all over New England (and other parts of the country) on your team, and I think it naturally feeds into the Connecticut aspect of it. How do you blend those cultures together? Because I think that’s one of those things: New York kids versus Mass. kids is a thing on every team. What’s it like for your team? 

Jason Tarnow: I mean, we have good kids, so they all get along. I totally get what you’re saying. I’m as upstate as you can get; I wear a ton of camouflage. I don’t hunt like everyone else from upstate. But it’s a different world even for me. I think one of the unique things about coming to any NESCAC school is the diversity of the student body is there. I often share that with the recruits. So they come in here, you get to play with kids from L.A., Seattle, Chicago, Texas, Florida, New England.

I think that’s a cool experience for a lot of kids to be able to develop relationships with guys from all over the country, because that’s that’s the real world, right? The real world is not staying in our cylinder of what we’re comfortable and used to. So I think it’s really cool to see the geographical size of a lot of our rosters in this league that kids just come from all over the country to play in the league. And I think that’s a really cool experience for kids.

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