For one day, the rivalry shifts from the battlefield to the lacrosse field. Green Berets. Navy SEALs. America’s most elite special operations forces compete with the same intensity, discipline, and commitment to excellence that defines their military careers. But when the final whistle blows, the score becomes secondary to the brotherhood.
Live from the 2nd Annual Stars and Stripes Classic, Fran Racioppi sat down with Army Head Coach Joe Alberici and Navy Head Coach Joe Amplo just hours before the teams took the field. While the rivalry between Army and Navy is one of the greatest traditions in sports, both coaches know the game has always represented something much bigger than winning. Every practice, every workout, and every lesson on the lacrosse field is preparing young men and women to lead under pressure, overcome adversity, and serve their country with honor.
Our conversation examines how service academy athletics develops leaders ready to fight and win our nation’s wars. Coach Alberici and Coach Amplo explain why competition, accountability, and resilience are not just traits of great athletes – they are the same qualities required to lead in combat.
As kickoff approaches, the focus shifts from strategy to mindset. Compete relentlessly. Trust your training. Focus on the next play. Because whether it’s on the lacrosse field, on a Special Forces ODA or SEAL platoon, success is built on discipline, accountability, and teammates who refuse to let each other fail.
Army and Navy compete to make each other better because one day these young men and women will stand together in defense of America.
The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by OneBrief; enabling military leaders to make innovative, informed and deliberate decisions faster than ever before. Superhuman command wins wars.
Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.
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Coach Amplo and Coach Alberici, welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast.
Great to be with you.
This is year two of the Stars and Stripes Classics Labor Day weekend. This time, we left Gillette in 2025. Coach Amplo’s team took down our team by two goals. All-around hard-fought game. There were some guys in ice baths and cryo chambers for probably weeks after, but we had to start looking forward. I know that from the Green Beret side. Everybody said, “We’re on to the next year,” and they put a lot of work into this year. I wanted to spend a minute just talking about from each of your perspectives what you’ve seen in the team thus far and how you prepared to come into next.
Certainly, the excitement from 2025’s event left everybody overwhelmed to be blown away from a positive standpoint of how successful we thought it was. Winning or losing, it was just the experience of being together. The excitement and the desire to be a part of this again from the community was incredible. Selecting their roster was a challenge because there were so many more individuals that were curious and excited to try and be a part of the team. Our team in 2026 is a little bit younger. We realized quickly in the game that youth is probably the biggest skill set that we try and acquire in the player acquisition phase of things. The excitement of the 2025 event exceeded every expectation. Win or lose, what mattered most was the experience of being together.
Which is not something you guys are used to having a deal with in your regular job.
We’re getting eighteen-year-olds one way or another. It was a fantastic experience for all involved, me included. I loved it. I loved getting to know our guys and some true American heroes. It was a real privilege to work with them. With all that the Green Beret Foundation had done for it and the PPL, word got out on the street. I know our talent pool widened. Charlie picked a great team. I was excited to be working with him and you could see right away that these guys had been hard at work because they knew what to expect.
They knew the scene. It’s an exceptional couple of days of practice. I know we’re excited to just get out and get after it. With the practice piece, the first thing I tell them is like, “My number one job is to keep you from yourself. We want to make sure everybody gets here on Monday for this game and not leave it all out on the practice field.” It’s because they’re just so competitive and so hungry that they would literally leave it all out on the practice field if you let them. Bringing them in together a little bit and slowing it down and trying to put together the best product we could for this game.
You have the amazing opportunity, both of you at West Point for you, Coach and you coach you’re at, the Naval Academy, but you get to work with the best of the best in so many ways year in and year out like folks who are committed to service at a young age. Which means 16 or 17 years old saying, “I’ve got a call from my congressman. I’ve got to start the testing. I’ve got to get myself prepared to make a decision that is not going to affect me for the next year or two, but for the next four years or eight years.” Usually at a minimum when he talked about the service requirements.
Ultimately, so many of the folks from each of the academies spend their twenty plus year career and are successful for a long period of time, but you get to work with the best. Can you just talk about that experience and talk about what you see when you look at your candidates who are coming in from great high school programs. What do you want from each of them in your respective programs?
I have such love, respect and admiration for young people just to be looking at these academies. I think back to myself as a 16- or 17-year-old. I wasn’t mature enough to make that decision or even to look at something like that. There’s such great respect and admiration that I have for them because they’ve thought about that and they’re thinking about serving their country.
When it comes down to selection time, we’re looking for talented athletes. There’s plenty of those out there. It starts to whittle down a little bit when you start to put that talented athlete with a selfless athlete. Furthermore, it starts to get whittled down a little bit when young people who are talented and selfless, but also willing to take a steeper path. That’s what both of our academies represented. It’s a little steeper path, but that steeper path takes you to a higher point. They become the greatest version of themselves when they go through the United States Military Academy. I’m sure Joe would say the same thing about the Naval Academy.
There is a little self-selection that goes on because of all that it takes to be part of it. We’re competing at the Division I level at the highest level and part of our job. Not the only one, but part of our job is to win games. We need to be there and looking at the best of the best. I’ve been very fortunate over the years to have been able to work with those young people who are willing to make those sacrifices and still compete at the highest level. Part of our job is to win games, which means constantly measuring ourselves against the very best.
I would like to echo Joe’s point. People on the outside often say that the young men and women that choose our academies and our institutions are built differently. I disagree with that wholeheartedly. They choose differently. Both of our institutions uncover the best version of the human being that’s inside that no other places on the planet can truly reveal. The level of resiliency it takes to get through our places on a daily basis uncovers the best of what this country has to see and deserves.
I say to every young man who sits in our office and we talk to, “This place will change your life, regardless of the background that you come from. It will change your life because it’s going to deliver to the world the best human being that you possibly can become.” That’s not an easy thing for a young man or young lady to choose. It’s a challenging perspective for them. Both Joe, and I, that’s what we look for. We want young men who want that challenge, who want to do tough things, want to be pushed down and fail sometimes and then try and climb up. Overcome that failure and try and charge to be successful at the highest level of our sport. Deliver it to the fleet, the Marine Corps and the army, the best version of human beings that can serve and lead our country.
I’ll just add on to this on a very personal note, Joe’s daughter, Sophia, is a junior midshipman. What greater testament can you have for the academy when you send your own daughter to it? My daughter just finished Plebe Summer at West Point. She’ll be an army lacrosse player also on our women’s team. We’re about the place and what it can do for young men. We’re also very much about it in the fact that we’ve had our own children going through it.
You got to be proud.
Joe and I have talked about this very often the past few years. I said this before publicly. Some of my proudest moments as the Navy coach have been the conversations I’ve had with Joe surrounding our daughters and the choices that they’ve made. As he’s talking there, I’m truthfully getting chills up and down my spine. I called him just as Plebe Summer ended at Army to see how his daughter was doing because it’s cool that him and I get to go through that journey together.
We want to rip each other’s faces off on game day in the Army Navy game but, at the end of the day, we’re about trying to develop young men and young women with our daughters to try and help them serve this great country. That’s what matters most. That’s lost in the world of college athletics nowadays. We try to hold on to that, that purity of what our jobs are, which is pretty cool.
At the end of the day, you’re developing young men who got to be great athletes, great soldiers, sailors and marines, but they have to be good humans who contribute to society because even their military service is going to end at some point. Our goal in the development of them doing the military is to return them back to civilian life as a high-functioning, performing member who’s contributing to society.
I couldn’t agree more. The core tenant to great leadership is just being a great human being. If you’re not that, you’re not signing up pretty easy academies for sure and being part of it. There’s urgency to both what Joe and I have to do and helping to prepare these young men. In our case, to lead this country’s soldiers and sailors. It’s something I know we both take very seriously and you got to do that through modeling and through high expectations. You have to make sure that you’re always looking to mentor and trying to develop because they’re going to take what they’ve learned off of the playing fields. They’re going to apply it to the companies and the people that they’re leading.
I know we both feel the exact same way in terms of the seriousness of what we have to do because from an impact standpoint, based on the hours that they spend with you in the lacrosse field just becomes their leadership laboratory. It’s what it is. There’s so many important things going on at our academies but undoubtedly, what they spend the most time with is lacrosse. That’s the nature of it. The people that you surround them with and the coaching staff that you surround them with has an enormous impact on their leadership style, which is going to affect them.
Both of us have so many former players that are in this game. Many of them go to the tip of the spear. They seek these high-level organizations within the Army and within the Navy and still call back on their times and the locker room and on the lacrosse fields. As much as it is such a joy for the young men to be a part of, the leadership lessons are impactful and lasting and will resonate for a lifetime.
Being around helps remind me and I’m sure it does for Joe, the responsibility we do have. Joe is right. It is a leadership lab that we are trying to operate and lead on the lacrosse field, but the burden of responsibility we have to deliver them to environments like these men are going to the tip of the spear and doing challenging things for our country. We owe it to these communities and to the community at a whole to provide the level of leadership or at least development and have them make some mistakes and learn on the job, so to speak, in our lab so that they can then lead the right people in these elite communities.
Each of you is very high on accountability. Our elite unit operators, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, accountability separates them from so many of their peers. Even within their respective services. You can teach it to an extent. You’ve got to live it to a bigger extent. It has to be emulated, but what you’ll see in a Seal Platoon or a Green Beret or ODA is guys who come forward time and time again and take ownership for decisions, ownership for actions.
As a Detachment Commander, the amount of times that guys who come to me and say, “I messed this up,” and I’d say, “I didn’t even know.” It weighs on guys. A lot of that comes back to our time in athletics and in a lot of our conversations that I’ve had. I’ve talked about my experience as a Division I rower at Boston University and how that set those conditions for me that I carried forward. How are you instilling ownership and accountability in your teams?
First, let me just address that you’re a B rower. There might be some discomfort on this side over here, so I just want to warn you there. Be careful. I look at countability as two types of accountabilities. There’s self-accountability. Each day, we tell a young man, “You’re trying to build your masterpiece. You want to live a masterpiece life.” It starts with building your masterpiece each day and having self-accountability.
The best leaders that I’ve seen are able to leave left and right. They’re able to lead up and down and not be afraid to step. What they may see is out of bounds in their young lives and challenge a young man and that peer accountability, which is the most courageous and toughest thing for a young person to find. It’s that boldness to try and be that leader that’s going to hold his teammates to the standard that you expect. Great leaders hold themself to the highest standard as consistently as they possibly can. The best leaders hold each other and others to that standard consistently. The best leaders lead in every direction—across, up, and down. They’re never afraid to step forward when leadership is needed.
It starts with yourself. Before you can hold others accountable, you got to hold yourself accountable. In the back of all of our guy’s lockers, there’s just a little mirror. It’s not for them to comb their hair or anything along those lines. It’s just that they get an opportunity to look at that mirror right before they put their helmet up after practice and take a little inventory. They’re the only ones that truly know whether they gave everything they had.
We can break it down for them. We have some film that might provide some evidence, but when you walk off the practice field only you know what you gave and what you had left. That’s for any experience. Not only on the field and the weight room. Once you’ve become a young person that can hold yourself accountable for things, we need you to start to help others on that same journey. There isn’t a person in a world that’s tough all the time.
The best at the best isn’t tough all the time and that’s where your teammates come in. When you start to stray a little bit or start to negotiate with yourself just a little bit. That’s when you need somebody to stop up and say, “Live to your stand or live to our standard.” When you do that, and you’ve got teams that are leading themselves and we can step aside and let them take ownership of all of it. That’s when you have the greatest results.
We got there a couple hours before the game. You guys are going to leave here and go to your respective teams. You’re going to have a message for each one of them. Coach, you brought up for a second the rivalry, and the rivalry lives. It lives in sports, between the academies and between the services. We’re brothers. The SEALs and the Green Berets will stand up for each other. We stand behind each other.
I served as an ODA commander under a Navy SEAL task unit for two deployments as my higher headquarters and I didn’t have an ODA next to me. I had a SEAL platoon and we worked with them day in and day out. We’re going to hit that field just like all our great rivalries do just like you do every year in the Patriot league. You’re going to go against each other. What are you going to tell the teams?
For me, they live a life of elite challenge and complicated dynamic environments. For a certain aspect, this is a complicated and dynamic environment for them because they haven’t been in it in a long time. The message I said to them at practice and I’ll say to them before the game is, “Go back to the basics. Go back to the fundamentals of the game and keep it as simple as you possibly can but try and win. Enjoy the experience of the competition of fighting against your brothers.
We saw the spirit of that in the game in 2025. It was an intense environment. Sometimes a little bit too intense for us, but it was an intense and fun environment. Afterwards, that handshake line was pretty impactful for me to see the respect and the true love that they have for each other and in honoring what they just did on that field battle.
For me, it doesn’t have much to do with playing hard. These are the elite of the elite and their incredible competitors. My message to them will be, let’s make sure we’re getting on to the next play. Since they are so accountable to what they’re doing, I don’t want anybody lingering in it and whatever the last thing was. Whether it was a good one or a bad one. Let’s get on to the next play. They can keep that focus of what the next thing is.
That’s going to allow them to be at the very best. If they could be at their very best individually, that’s going to enable us as a team to be at our very best. I’m excited for them for this opportunity, the Green Beret Foundation, the SEAL Foundation, the PLL, these men, and these heroes. I want them to make sure that they enjoy every moment of it.
I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedules to come out here and coach these teams. We know it’s
Thanks a lot, Fran.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Green Beret Foundation
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