Talking Team USA with Mike Pressler

With Team USA tryouts during Labor Day weekend, the slow roll to the 2014 World Games held in Denver, Colo. Starts to pick up speed. Held at Goucher College in Towson, Md., 95 players will come out to battle for a spot on the 40-man roster that will again be cut to 23 prior to the start of international competition next summer.

To get a feel for the evaluation process, I talked with Bryant coach Mike Pressler, who led Team USA to gold in the 2010 World Games in Manchester, England. Pressler held his tryouts at Bryant in the summer of 2009, and the highly competitive scrimmages provided some of the most entertaining lacrosse I've ever seen. He talked about his process before, during and after tryouts, applying his experience to the situation Furman coach Richie Meade faces as he readies a new team to defend its gold medal in 2014.

Read excerpts of my conversation with Pressler below, or listen to the podcast for a lengthy discussion of how a coach forms a championship squad on the world stage.

ZB: As a coaching staff, before getting to tryouts, how much do you discuss the “selection criteria” in terms of what you should be looking for in players to make the team?
MP: "We put so much emphasis on the personal qualities, the character traits, the issues there, the moral fiber, selfless attitude, national pride, your level of patriotism. Those core qualities were very, very important in selecting the tryout pool and eventually selecting the team.....It was going to be in our case a team made up of guys in specific roles, and once those roles were determined, they had to buy in...We all know Richie Meade, his years at the Naval Academy, very, very patriotic guy, wear's his country's flag on his sleeve very proudly, as well as his entire staff. I know speaking to Richie he's going to take a lot of those same type of qualities as he evaluates those players in those situations, and then the easy part is truly picking the talent. We've all been in the game for a while, and that's why, you have a staff of four or five guys and you value your staff's opinion that way. So an all-star staff, Richie Meade and those guys, they're going to put the best team together eventually that gives us the best chance to win the gold again in 2014.”

Once the guys start playing during tryouts, how do you break up responsibilities among the coaches, particularly in terms of evaluation:
“As our group, I remember, we kind of had each coach kind of looking at a position. You're looking at everybody, but I wanted coach [Joe] Alberici concentrating on the attack guys. Rick Sowell in the midfield. Coach [Tony] Resch was looking at the D guys. We all kind of looked at the goalies. And then Paul Cantabene, his job and one job only in the evaluation process, was to find the best face-off guy. That was a big thing that we didn't get done in '06 that we had to do in 2010...We looked at everybody, but each one of us had our one eye on our specific position group.”

How might 2010 influence the making of the 2014 team:
“I just think in 2014 it's going to be even more competitive than 2010....The Iroquois team in 2014 is going to be very, very formidable. The Canadian team I think is going to be even better than they were in 2010....I think Canada's better. Iroquois going to be formidable. England's going to be better. Australia's going to be better. So I think it's going to be a more competitive experience, but fortunately for us, '14 it's going to be on our home soil.”

It sounds like the tryouts are similar to recruiting showcases for high school players. It is often said that when coaches attend those showcases, they watch not only the play on the field, but how the players act, who celebrates with teammates, hustles everywhere, carries himself well, all of those intangible things that speak to a guy as a worker and teammate. How much do you look for those things in the Team USA tryout?
“ I told the players to their faces that that part of it was going to be huge in the evaluation process. You go back to the recruiting scenario and the comparison there. In Division I we have 40-man rosters, so if you make a recruiting mistake along the way and something can absorb a mistake or two in the recruiting process. When you're selecting a 23-man team and you make a mistake that comes back to bite you in that selection of 23, and that guy doesn't pan out or whatever, that's a much greater mistake that's magnified even more, because once the games begin you can't replace that player. When the games begin, you turn in your 23-man roster, and that is it, so if there's injury or there's something that happens, whatever and you lose a guy or two, some of that stuff you can control, some of it you can't, then now you're really short. And again go back to the tournament, it's a little less than two weeks and you play six, seven games there. It's a tournament of attrition. Not only do you evaluate talent, but you need guys in incredible physical condition. You need guys that take care of their bodies. You need guys that can play bumped or bruised a little bit, and that's going to happen, especially as you play against the Canadians and some of the others…Just the stamina. Once you get over there it's a marathon. You've got to be ready to face all those types of adversity.”

You mention the need for guys in great shape. Are their specific ways you evaluate that during the tryouts?
“...You kind of evaluate as the tryout got going, who was playing well and hard after the first event. You can look at who was kind of fading as the thing went forward, and who is picking up momentum.”

Can you describe game play at the tryouts?
“In the tryouts, in those events, we played international rules, and we had referees that refereed accordingly. The international rules are very different from the MLL. The No. 1 probably is the shot clock and all of that. There's no clearing lines like in Division I. There's no clock that way. Defensively in the MLL it's a much more physical game, so the defensemen, they go out and start hacking up their guys, they're going to the penalty box in the international game. So not only did the guys tryout out and have to show their wares, they had to adapt to the international game, and that was much more difficult for some of them early on than others…There's so many rules that are different and unique that our guys never see but once every four years, and we just made a point, as Richie will, to form Team USA to play in the international level in the World Games under these rules. To have them try out, or to show their wares in any other set of rules just didn't make sense.”

So as play is going on, one of the things you watch is how certain key players do against each other – how this defenseman matches up with that attackman, or this LSM marks that middie, etc. How do you evaluate those little games within the games?
“There's so much to that. Go back to the 23-man roster. How many attackmen do you take? How many poles to do you take? You know you're going to take at least two goalies in the end. You know you'll need at least one face-off guy, and then one kind of hybrid guy, a guy who can face-off in an emergency but maybe he can play some shortstick man-down, play on the second midfield...Defensemen that can play LSM and close. Attackman that can play some midfield and attack. Some middies that would buy into, like Kevin Cassese and Chris Schiller did, a shortstick defensive middie role. Picking you're team, you're thinking about all these things through the tryout process and who fits into your scheme and how we wanted to do it the best way.”

What about the other side of that in terms of watching how guys play together. It is easy to see individuals performing well and wanting to take the best three attackmen or middies, but it might be the best unit is actually the best, third-best, and eighth-best attackmen. How do you evaluate that and then make that tough decision?
“There's one white ball out there and not everybody can touch it down their on offense, so as you build your unit you don't quite want three good carry guys or X guys on the attack . You need a great lefty. You need a great right-handed shooter. You need a dodger. You need that X guy. You might have taken one or two at each position, but as we built the team we built each unit to complement each other...In picking the team I think you're picking the units first and putting together the unit and that little subset, and then eventually that's going to all add up to we hope a terrific group of 23.”

So what advice would you give to any of the players trying out this weekend. Obviously they need to play well, but what other things should they or shouldn't they do to help their odds of making the team?
“I go back to your analogy, the summer recruiting thing...I keep saying that word is 'team.' It's not an all-star team. This is not the Division I North/South game. This is a selection process in putting together the best team to win the 2014 World Championships. You keep saying that world team, and then when you say it, you think about all those things that go with being a team. And each one of those guys that are trying out knows exactly what I'm talking about there, and I remember saying that very phrase to our group as we got ready in 2009 to pick the group. Richie's going to do it differently. Richie's going to do it well and his staff is great. But I know Richie well, and 'team' is going to be a huge part of this.” 


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