The United States doesn’t play for second place. Not on the battlefield and certainly not on the lacrosse field. As we gear up for the first ever Stars and Stripes Classic, Fran Racioppi sat down with Head Coach of Team USA Seth Teirney. Seth is also the Director of Competition at the Premier Lacrosse League and the Head Coach of Hofstra University.
He’s involved in every aspect and level of lacrosse from the pros down to youth. He’s a national champion as a coach and played in the National Lacrosse League as a player.
Seth’s attitude about lacrosse is gold medal or bust. Fran and Seth covered why it takes “feeling the sport” to compete at the highest level as both an athlete and a coach. Seth shared the launch story of the PLL from a broken down bus in Israel and how the PLL honors the Indigenous legacy of lacrosse.
Seth also gives his tips to parents raising athletes and explains what it means to coach the US National Team. Plus he makes his prediction for the battle of the year, as the Green Berets take on the Navy SEALs September 2 at Gillette Stadium.
Take a listen, watch, or read our conversation with one of lacrosse’s greatest players and coaches, then head over to our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast platform to catch all the action from the Stars and Stripes Classic. Head over to Green Beret Foundation and join our 18 Series Match Challenge to support our team as the Snakeeaters take on the Frogmen.
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Coach, welcome to The Jedburgh Podcast.
Thank you for having me. This one hits a little differently. I’ve been on a couple of shows before, but I am honored to be sitting next to you. Thank you for your service and everything that you’ve done. To sit here and talk about the country that we love, the sport that we love, this company that we love, and the PLL is an honor. I appreciate the time that we’re going to share here.
The amount of support we’ve had from the PLL in putting this together is unparalleled. I got to start there. I have to thank you and the whole team here, Grace and Danny, for setting all this up. They said, “We’re going to give you a spot in the fan zone right outside of the entrance.” I didn’t know that we were going to be at the entrance.
It’s awesome. We appreciate that. When the PLL does something, it’s never done small. If we’re going to go in, we’re going to be all in.
I’ve noticed that over the last couple of years as the PLL was launched and as it’s grown. You’ve been involved from the beginning. You are the Head Coach at Hofstra. You are the Head Coach for USA Lacrosse and the national team. We’re going to talk about both of those things. You’re also the PLL Head of Competition, and you’ve been involved for a long time. You’re the advisory board chairman who advises on all matters of lacrosse for the PLL. It starts to bridge that gap of the PLL into the collegiate, high school, and youth levels to stay abreast of the sport and stay ahead of it.
To your point, when you look at what the PLL has done from its inception, it has set the standard for professionalism. When we launched this show, grew it over the last couple of years, partnered with the Green Beret Foundation, and created the Jedburgh Media Channel over the last few months, that’s what we’re talking about, people, organizations, and leaders who set the example every single day in everything that they do. When we look at lacrosse and the growth of the sport, and I’m going to ask you about that in a second, the PLL sets the benchmark.
It starts with the Rabil Brothers and their attention to detail. When they make their minds up, there’s no turning back. It’s breaking the side view mirrors off the car, and we’re looking out the front. This whole thing started technically in a small coffee house somewhere in Israel. Our bus broke down. I had a chance to recruit Paul Rabil to Hopkins. We could talk about that later on.
This whole thing started when a bus broke down in 2018 in Israel for the World Games. We were waiting for the bus and Paul and I sat down. We have a relationship from me recruiting him, being on the same sideline with him, and winning a national championship in ‘05 with him. He said, “We’re going to start this lacrosse league.” I looked at him with that look like, “Are you nuts?”
He took over for the next fifteen minutes to a half hour to think about a plan. Sometimes, I don’t like the parallels between the military and other things because they are not the same, but with the attention to detail on this mission to start the PLL, there was nothing that was missed. It was all in. It was his turn to burn the boats. There was no turning back. We were going in and he was starting this league.
The attention to detail on the mission to start the Premier Lacrosse League made sure that nothing was missed.
Talk about the growth of the league. In the 1st year, you’ve got 6 teams that the league launches with. It’s doing this national tour. Everybody’s playing in the same location, but they’re all neutral sites. There’s no regional affiliation. A lot of that has changed, especially going into the 2024 season. We have regional affiliations on the teams. There are only 2 neutral sites out of the 12-game schedule. We’re looking forward and talking about, “We’re going to have home games. We’re going to have away games. What’s that going to look like?” From your seat and from where you’ve sat and been a part of this organization, what does that growth path look like, and how do you moderate that?
First of all, it’s wild to start the conversation. The second piece is that the forward-thinking is unbelievable. The five-year windows of where we want to be and what’s going to take place, the model was right to be a touring league from the beginning financially to understand the summertime, people having plans, and what the lift was going to be.
The addition of a team and the setback that we turned into a leapfrog with the year of the pandemic, being in the bubble, and setting the bar during that was unbelievable. The growth going forward with the team with city affiliations and getting that settled like, “Let’s get it perfect,” however long it’s going to take before maybe the next evolution of the PLL. The bouncing off of ideas, the people at the top, and those meetings. Sometimes, an idea could sound so outlandish, and then before you know it, it comes to life.
I want to ask you about the roots of the sport. We’ve been talking about that as the league has grown and as the popularity of lacrosse has grown. I think back to my lacrosse career. As short as it was, I had four years when I was in high school. We didn’t have a team when I was in eighth grade. My year was the year where we said, “We’re going to build this thing.”
You coached one of my best friends in the world, Michael Lane, with whom I went to high school. You coached him at Hofstra. He’s the best natural athlete I’ve ever met, and I say that wholeheartedly from playing multiple sports in high school to being a Division I athlete on the men’s rowing team at Boston University, being a Green Beret, and serving with some of the fittest people in the world. Michael Lane is the best natural athlete I’ve ever met. As a kid, he was my peer on the same lacrosse field. I would be playing defense and watch and go, “Could I ever be that good?” The sport started back with the indigenous people. Talk a bit about the formation of the sport.
What the indigenous people did and their use of lacrosse, this medicine game, was an unbelievable concept. It wasn’t a sport. It was a way of celebration. It was a way of life. The respect and the homage to their ancestors to keep this thing growing is unbelievable. We start to join in with the indigenous people. I remember probably back in 1976 when my uncle played for the Long Island Tomahawks, which was an indoor box lacrosse league. I was the ball boy at Nassau Coliseum. I started to understand that this sport and where it came from was not just about playing. It was understanding. It was feeling the sport, not playing it or acting it through.
When we have a field blessing in each site from someone from a local tribe or the indigenous affiliation, it’s wonderful. There’s the evolution from the wood sticks to these plastic sticks, the evolution of the helmets, and how this has taken place and its growth. Ultimately, we could be talking in a few years about this being back in the Olympics and what that leap is going to be. Having an affiliation with USA Lacrosse, playing against the Haudenosaunee team for the last couple of years, and looking at their respect for the game makes you sit back and be honored that you’re a small part of it.
Let’s talk about the game for a second itself. You said something that I wrote down, and it’s about feeling the sport. We have this sport of lacrosse, which was a bit of a lifestyle event before becoming an official sport. It is about feeling because you have this element, especially in men’s lacrosse, where you’re combining these elements of hockey, football, soccer, and basketball. You’ve got all these different skills that have to come to bear to produce a product on the field that is so fast-paced and so intense that it almost doesn’t rival any of those other sports.
It’s what you mentioned earlier, and your Military career speaks for itself. You need to be able to talk without speaking for the man to your right, the man to your left, the woman to your right, the woman to your left, or whatever it may be. That was a feel. You talked without speaking. When you’re in that boat and you’re rowing, and you need to react off of someone’s reaction, it’s a look. It’s some type of body movement. To be successful, it’s not written down in a handbook. It’s a feel. You have to be able to feel the game.
Becoming successful is not written down in a handbook. It is a feel.
Coach Krzyzewski from Duke basketball spoke to our team the night before the gold medal game and talked about it. He said, “Don’t just play the game. Feel the game tomorrow. Reach out and touch it. If you play it, you’re going to miss something. You’re going to leave something behind. Feel what’s going on around you. Enjoy it, and then hopefully, you are the last team standing and they’re playing your theme song,” which ultimately is the national anthem.
You’ve been around the game a long time. You played at Johns Hopkins, and then you transitioned into coaching. You started as an assistant coach at Hofstra, worked your way up, and eventually became the head coach. You’ve been appointed as the head coach of the USA national team. When you look at the evolution of the player during your tenure from player to coach at various levels, what have you seen in the difference between players many years ago to what’s on the field now?
They’re so much more involved because of the growth that we’re talking about a bunch. The cardio, the lifting, the strength and conditioning, and the approach to the game have been so different. It’s been more business-like. In the beginning, I don’t want to say that there was a slight effort or even a half-assed effort and not having an all-in effort. It has taken over and it has reached that.
When you see athletes that look and run like Paul Rabil or some of these other players and you see them on show here in Fairfield, it’s unbelievable. This game here, if you’re going to be a little bit smaller, you better be lightning fast or you better be unbelievably smart to be a step ahead because what’s going on out there, it’s an NFL looking-group that’s playing basketball or a gracious, skilled sport. It’s pretty wild.
With the cardiovascular system of a soccer player.
No question. You have to get up and down. The running time and the reaction in the field are so important here.
That’s why I think about the reaction time of a hockey player where it’s microseconds.
There are so many of these little decisions that take place. When a ball hits a goalie, there’s a deflection. You’re changing. It’s like, “We have to react here. If he makes a save, we have to react.” If you were on offense, you’re on defense and riding. The athlete being trained physically and mentally and going through all those things is unbelievable.
You look at all the different versions of lacrosse. Sixes, box lacrosse, field lacrosse, and international lacrosse, all of these are a little bit in particular to your training. All in all, it’s an all-in sport that is on fire. Ultimately, in 2028, it will go back to the Olympics. In 2027, the next World Games will be somewhere in Japan. Things that are great for the sport as we look forward.
What does it mean to you to be named the head coach of the national team?
I’m going to begin to start to get teary-eyed. I have a hard time. I wasn’t in the military, but my respect for the military is off the charts to allow us to live every day while you guys are out there providing that freedom to be 1 of 13 people that have ever been named to the men’s national team as head coach. It’s humbling. I’m honored, but I also feel the responsibility of a nation of all of our Military branches to be able to wear those three letters across your chest.
There is no second place. We’re not playing for second place. It’s a gold medal or bust. I need to push in the pile. I need my assistants to push in the pile. I am taken back that I’m sitting here with you and we’re talking about, in a couple of years, walking out onto the field, hearing that national anthem, and fighting for an entire country in the sport of lacrosse, not on the battlefield, but that would be our battle.
That’s your battlefield. Talk about coaching for a minute. We talked about the evolution of the player, but what about the evolution of the coach? Coaching has had to evolve as players have had to evolve and as the mentality of players has evolved. We’ve had a lot of conversations over the last couple of years about the younger generation.
I came up in a period where coaches would grab you by the face mask and throw you on the ground. Sometimes, you might get kicked, but you got up and you got the work done. It was sometimes out of fear more than anything else. That doesn’t resonate as much with the kids who are growing up. I have little kids myself. My daughter’s in high school. She doesn’t react the same way. Talk about the evolution that you had to adopt as a coach.
That form of coaching does not exist in 2024. That had to be adjusted. Personally, when I look up coaching in the dictionary, I see it as mentoring, teaching, connection, parenting, and friendship. Those would be the words that sum up what coaching is about. It’s another occupation of feel. It’s to be able to connect with a young man or a young woman on a level where they buy into the trust of you, telling them this is going to be better for them.
Your squad leaders, your group, or the one in front you have put all of your trust in, that was your coach. He had a different name, whether it was sergeant, lieutenant, or whatever it may be. This is our level of assistant coach. That’s where we are. When this is all over however many years, I hope there are a ton of people out there who could say that I impacted their lives positively. I can then know that I did my job while I was vertical.
You used to be able to get into a lot of sports. Lacrosse is one of them. When you think about hockey, you could get into it, maybe when you were in high school. You talk about people who walked on in college and they made great careers. There’s this push because competition has elevated so much that we’ve got kids like my son. We’re sitting here and saying, “We got to get him into lacrosse next year,” because this is the first year I let him. He’s already playing hockey. He’s already playing tennis. Is that a good thing?
I don’t want to dodge the question because there are people that are on both sides. The world has evolved from that three-sport athlete, even that two-sport athlete, where you should be doing this the whole time. It’s not healthy to just play lacrosse. It’s not healthy to do one thing. Especially at the ages of your children, I suggest that you open up as many opportunities. Gradually, they’ll migrate to what they love and what they feel will be their future.
Always be able to be nimble. Put the blinker on and shift lanes. At those ages, let’s try to do as much as we can and open their access door as best we can. There will come a point in time where to keep up with the Joneses, you’re going to need to push in the pile with 1 particular sport or 1 particular activity and push forward, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a life decision forever. For some people, it certainly is.
Always be nimble in life. Know when to put the blinker on and shift lanes.
My uncle, who coaches in this league and is one of the best, if not the best, lacrosse coaches in the world in my eyes, gave me my first stick when I was probably 6 years old or 7 years old on the lawn of my grandmother’s house. He took away my first baseman’s mitt and made me watch like this was going to be the change. I did play both for a while, but then I couldn’t keep up.
I was bitten by the lacrosse bug. It’s out there. It’s a very addictive sport. You can get better at it on your own. You need a wall, a pitchback, or one friend whereas in baseball or basketball, you might need more. It’s an addictive sport. There are two sides to this. If they find the love, then let them push in the pile. If they’re still in between two things, then allow them to grow as children to find out exactly which path they’re going to take or which avenue they’re going to go down.
Coach Andy Towers is a good friend of the show. He’s still the only person who’s been on the show three times in our three-and-a-half-year history. We had the chance to have him on a couple of years ago right before they went into the playoffs. They didn’t have the greatest regular season. They then made the run in the playoffs and won. We had him back because everything he talked about in the first episode, they executed to perfection. I’m like, “You got to come back and tell us exactly how you did it.” He then came on for a recap the following year when they lost in the finals.
Andrew and I have been friends for a long time. He’s a guy that played at Brown and Connecticut High School. You would label him as a freak athlete with a passion to win and that’s off the charts. He connects with people. You see some of his locker room things. Andrew was a physical. He was a left-lane player. He didn’t spend much time in the middle lane or the right lane. If he was in, he was in. He’s got a little bit of Popeye to him. He’s like, “I am who I am. You can like me or not like me.” That’s why we love Andrew. He’s doing a great job. They had a huge win here. I’m a fan of all the coaches, but my friendship with Andrew has been great. I cherish it. At this point in time, I wish him well.
You listen to what he talks about and you’re ready to run through the wall. You don’t even know where you’re going to go. You have to start running somewhere.
He had a guy on his team, Brayden Mayea, who scored his first goal and he was not prepared for the Andy Towers chest bump. He almost had to go into the medical tent after it. He got him. He knocked his own player back. He’s Popeye. He’s like, “I am who I am.”
He’s legitimately probably happier for the guy than he is for himself because he’s genuine like that. In your role as the head of competition, what do you see next for the PLL?
The hopes and dreams are to fill stadiums across the country, have worldwide membership where people are logging in and watching this sport an inch closer to what people perceive as the big three with the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball, and to be talking about that. For that to happen, we need two men, Mike and Paul Rabil, to get together and have the courage to put the chips on the table and push them forward. That was the ignition.
What I see in a few years coming forward is stadiums being sold out, unbelievable coverage from all the social media and regular media outlets, this thing becoming worldwide, and people talking about the PLL every day. That’s what I see. As far as on the field in a few years, I’m hopeful that we see teams that may be into the teens, games happening in different cities on the same day, and mainstream coverage that’s linear across all channels. That’s what I see.
In a few years, stadiums will be sold out for lacrosse because of the unbelievable coverage from social media and news outlets.
The WPLL one day could be on the horizon. I see little boys and girls growing up wanting to be professional lacrosse players. If that could happen and I can help push that to happen, I may not be vertical when it happens, but I’ll know that we did our job going forward. That’s what I see as the head of competition and the dream of this happening.
You’re going to have a lag factor. You’re going to have to have a whole bunch of years where you’re recruiting mechanisms for the kids. The kids are going to see it like kids who grew up watching the NFL, the NBA, and the NHL. They’re going to say, “I want to be like them. I want to be like that guy. I went to their games.” They got to put the work in and they got to get older. How do you look at the sport’s ability to recruit the top athletes against the other sports? You’re still going to compete with football, baseball, and other sports.
You see it a little bit. We’ve got some football players that played football in college. We’ve got some basketball players. We’ve got one who could be on the horizon who finished his college career and is going to go to another college and play his fifth year. Maybe he’s in our league year. We’ll see how that plays out. We’ve had a guy who played in the NFL for the Patriots and had a run with us here.
It’s coming. There are kids in California and Texas that would be big football or Florida big basketball schools that they’re entertaining the thought. As they see that there’s a life after college in lacrosse, you’re going to see it more. With the combining forces of US lacrosse, the PLL, and the NCAA, if they all could get together and we could all swim and row in the same direction, this thing’s going to skyrocket.
There are a lot of incredible games that happen every weekend in the PLL schedule, but the main event is coming up on September 2nd, 2024. It may be an exhibition game, but for guys like me, this is the main event. We have the Green Beret Foundation and Green Berets versus the Navy SEAL Foundation and the Navy SEALS. It’s the Stars & Stripes Classic’s first inaugural game. It’s going to be at Gillette Stadium on September 2nd, 2024, on the quarter-final weekend. The PLL is putting this thing on in combination with the foundations. Talk for a second about the importance of that event.
I’ll get choked up talking about it. When this idea floated past me by the people who created it, it made so much sense. How did this go so long and didn’t happen? What is going on that this is such a layup of a thought? I can’t wait to get there. I’ve certainly been on some emails with the Green Beret and putting their roster together. It’s going to be unbelievable.
We’ve had a couple who graduated from Hofstra and could be on the Navy SEAL team. I know the Army coach and the Navy coach will play roles in what’s going on, and then certainly myself as the next USA coach to be there, work the game, and thank each and every one of those participants and coaches. It’s going to be what we would call a forever day.
It’s one of those moments when you win a gold medal. That’s a forever game. You are going to remember it one way or the other. You’d like to remember it the right way. When we get the Stars & Stripes game going and as we’re in it, I hope that it doesn’t take over my emotions or the people’s emotions. At the end of the day, it’s going to be the forever game for a lot of people, and I can’t wait for it to happen.
I come from Boston. We in Boston know what it means to have tension in sports against rivals. For us, it’s those New York teams. The equivalent of the Red Sox Yankees is 100% the Green Berets versus the Navy SEALs.
There’s no question. I’ve been on the sidelines for a lot of big games, the Hopkins-Maryland game, the Hofstra-Umass, and USA-Canada. I’ve been to all of those scenarios and have been humbled. I’ve been to all the PLL games. This one’s going to hit differently to see everybody laying it on the line and fighting for their branch but also playing almost in unison of growing this game, being thankful for everything, and having the crowd. I could only imagine what the crowd’s reactions are going to be during this Stars & Stripes game. It’s going to be off the charts.
I can’t wait. We’ll be covering the whole thing. What’s your prediction?
I’m on your show, so I’m not sure how to go here. The military is going to win that day. If you could let me escape with that, I would love to see that. Maybe it ends in a tie, but it’s going to be an unbelievable event.
There are no ties here. We’re going to remove that doubt. What you’re building here is incredible. We’ve seen it evolve over the last couple of years. I know that as we look forward to the future, this will continue to grow and gain traction in the vision that you, Paul, and Mike have. I look forward to watching and being a part of it. I couldn’t thank you and the entire PLL team so much for allowing us to be here and putting the Stars & Stripes game together in about six weeks’ time. It’s coming up. We got to start getting ready. Thank you for all that you’re doing. It’s going to be a great day out here. We got a hot one, but it’s going to be a good one.
I appreciate that. We should thank you. You’re part of this. You’re lifting as much as we’re lifting here. Together, we’re going to make this thing an unbelievable event for years to come. Thank you for everything you’ve done for your time and for this country. I’m unbelievably thankful.
