S3 E29. From Inside the Crease to Behind the Whistle: Matt Palumb's Lacrosse Journey, Part I.

In this episode of 'Get the Lax Scoop,' hosts Big Dawg and Jaybird interview Matt Palumb, an iconic figure in the world of lacrosse. The hosts provide background on their guest, highlighting Palumb's illustrious career as a standout goaltender for Syracuse University's lacrosse team and his transition into a top-notch referee. The conversation dives into Palumb's early influences, including his father, a notable high school football coach, and his experiences at the All American Lacrosse Camp. Palumb shares vivid memories from his time at Syracuse, playing with legendary players like the Gait brothers and discusses the rigors and highlights of collegiate practices under Coach Roy Simmons Jr. The episode also features insights into the importance of playing multiple sports during development and addresses the current trend towards sports specialization. Lastly, listeners are introduced to some timeless coaching wisdom and are given a sneak peek at Palumb's views on the impact of multi-sport participation on athletic growth.

00:00 Introduction to Get the Lax Scoop

00:23 Meet the Hosts: Big Dawg and Jaybird

01:44 Special Guest: Matt Palumb's Lacrosse Journey

02:37 Matt's Officiating Career

13:30 Mindset Minute: Old Sayings, Real Truths

16:20 College Lacrosse Recruiting Insights

16:53 Matt P's Early Refereeing Days

19:08 Athletic Development and Multi-Sport Experience

20:03 The Downside of Over-Specialization in Youth Sports

21:45 Recruiting and the Value of Multi-Sport Athletes

23:28 Memorable Moments and Practices at Syracuse University

25:04 Legendary Players and Unforgettable Games

31:21 The Impact of Coach Simmons

32:43 Conclusion and Sign-Off

NEW BOOK!
Inside the Recruiting Game: Insights From College Lacrosse Coaches
-Available on Amazon.com as an Ebook and paperback

Donate to Harlem Lacrosse Summer Camp:

https://www.harlemlacrosse.org/gmvs2025

Links to training videos:
Master The 5 Best Dodges From the Wing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_7LDOcQQ6Q&t=88s

Blazing Shots... on the Run!
https://youtu.be/XiptPlM63oQ

Check us out...

On YouTube @jaymcmahonlax23
On Instagram @jaymcmahonlax23
On Facebook @: facebook.com/jmcmahonlax23. Page name: Jay McMahon Lacrosse

Jules Heningburg: https://thelaxlab.com/

Check out!... Coach Tintle's Lacrosse Barn:

https://g.co/kgs/eXedCXf

SuccessHotline with Dr. Rob Gilbert on Ironclad & Apple Podcasts

Brian Cain Daily Dominator on Apple Podcasts

Lacrosse Charities Mentioned in S2 E36:
https://www.4thefuturefoundation.org/

https://www.harlemlacrosse.org/

https://15forlife.org/

Transcript

0:00

It's time for Get the Lack Scoop, a podcast bringing you all the people and stuff you should know in the game of lacrosse. We take lack seriously, but ourselves, not so much. Join host Big Dog and Jaybird and the biggest names in the game brought to you by Jay McMahon lacrosse. That's JML skills, mindset, and lacks IQ training. Ron Doglish, the big dog, was a collegiate football and lacrosse player at Brown. He was also an assistant lacrosse coach and the executive director of the Sports Foundation. And Jay McMahon, the Jaybird, a three time All American midfielder at Brown. He was the captain of the U. S. Junior National Team and is the founder of JML. And Joining us in the studio, Steve Grisolfi, who's collegiate lacrosse career statistics equals one goal against Dartmouth brought to you by Jay McMahon lacrosse. That's JML skills, mindset, and lacks IQ training, helping the next generation of lacrosse players get to the next level well, lacrosse fans, welcome to another tremendous episode. I'm sure it's going to be a tremendous episode, Jay Epic of get the lack scoop based on. Our guest today. Absolutely. I think, you know, is there a guy who's been better known over more years, who's been around more big lacrosse moments than no way than our guests today? No. Um, and so I'm really excited. Jay, this is gonna be a great time, great conversation. Absolutely. You know, it could get, I, I sense with this guest it could get a little spicy. We could get a little sidetrack from time to time, perhaps Jay. Oh yeah. But we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Super spicy. Love. I'm loving it. Well, here we go with the intro. Our next guest was a standout goaltender, who as a senior in high school, earned all American Honors as he led Jamesville dewitt to a New York State Championship back in 1986. He went on to a record setting career in the cage for Syracuse. From his sophomore to senior years, he helped the Orange win three straight national championships as a sophomore at su. He was named the most outstanding player in the 1988 NCAA championship. He earned the honor on the strength of a 21 save performance against Cornell in the national title game that propelled the orange to its second national championship and first undefeated season in 31 years. He finished his career with 537 saves, which ranks seventh on the school's all time list. In addition, he holds the orange record for career winning percentage at 95.2%, going 40 and two as a starter. After his playing career, he became a lacrosse referee For 10 years, he worked his way up the ladder and for the past 20 years, he has now officiated umpteen NCA Final Four in national championship events at the Division one, and he's probably in the twenties to thirties actually at the division one, two, and three levels. He also worked the 2006 and 2023 FIL World Lacrosse Championships. He's currently the head referee of the PLLA position he has held since the league's inception in 2019 and has become one of the most recognized faces and personalities in the league. All along, he has maintained his day job in the Department of Athletics as director of donor relations at his alma mater. He is a true rarity in athletics. A star player who became a top-notch official. Please welcome the one, the only Matt Palem. Welcome Jay. I'm gonna have to have you give me the intro wherever I go. That's sounding. I was like, wow. That was, that was pretty good, Matt. Huh? That was pretty good. Oh man. Thank, it's fun doing research on these careers. I mean, it's, it's amazing. The only, the only Miss I'm, I'm now, in, at Le Moine College, so I, I did 12 years at SU and then I refereed fulltime for a few years.'cause I do hoops also. Oh, okay. Now I, I've been at Le Moine for about a year, so that's the only update. That's I gotcha. Other than that, you were spot on. Okay. Now that I see the background I gotcha now. Awesome. Yeah. Well, great, Jay, I, I alluded in my lead in Jay, which I thought was a tremendous lead in, if I might, oh, let's give you some credit now. But, but, but Maddy, it's unbelievable when you go through that from player to all the different levels you've officiated, just like all the big games you've been around, all the greatest players. Think about, think about what his eyes have seen. Oh my God, it's unbelievable the history of lacrosse. So we, we really look forward to diving into that. But Maddy, we wanna start with you. And one of the coolest things for Jay and I is, you know, getting guys like you who we've kind of known from afar and been around forever in the game and wondering where did it all start for you? Like, where did the passion for this game begin? Yeah. And who were some of the people that really influenced you as a kid and got you into this game? Sure. So I'm, I'm a native of Syracuse, born and raised, been here forever. Uh, so we've had some, you know, pretty rich, lacrosse tradition for, for a long time and, and due, you know, due to the, the Hoone culture right. In, in our area. Right. And Syracuse University's been playing lacrosse forever. Now, the, the flip side of that is I grew up in a, in a very sports household, and my dad, who I know we're gonna talk about a little bit, but, you know, he was a, a football baseball guy. He played both sports at Syracuse and Gotcha. You know, he thought lacrosse is for the guys that couldn't really play football. So, so, so, uh, anyways, the, yeah, he is huge in my sports background. Like as, as soon as I could walk and talk, I'm, I'm at West Genesee High School where he was the football coach at double sessions in the locker room, you know. Dressing up as the mascot. There was nothing more important in the world to me than West Genesee football. I mean, oh man. Right? Wow. I mean, wearing the helmet, the, you know, the whole thing from the time I could walk and talk until, you know, I was about 14 and my dad goes, come on, you gotta go. Yeah. You go do your own thing. So anyways, um, so. Fast forward or, or back to your, your, your question about my lacrosse roots. Ironically, I'm sitting at Le Moine College, and Le Moine College was the site of the All American Lacrosse camp, which was one of the very first lacrosse camps of all these 80 gazillion lacrosse camps that used to be, that are now all in their graves because nobody wants to learn anything. Everybody just wants to play. Right. But my first experience, Walt Munsey, who was my, uh, probably my number one mentor in, in officiating, but he's a local guy who was a high school basketball coach. He refered the 90 title game that I played in. Okay. Wow. So it. Oh man, you know, and he ran the All American lacrosse camp. He got the idea, he was a basketball guy. Um, back in the late sixties is when this thing started, and basketball was ahead of the curve doing camp. So he said, ah, he was coaching at a hoop camp. He's like, boy, you know, why not a lacrosse camp? So he started the All American lacrosse camp at Le Moine College where I'm sitting. And the cool thing about that was, well, you know, first of all back then that you got dropped off on Sunday and picked up on Friday, right? Yeah, yeah, right. An actual full week. Right. And secondly, um, so the unique thing about All American Camp, and this is all gonna come together, sorry to babble, but the cool thing about the All American camp, like if you went to the Syracuse camp, you'd go to and, and, you know, see their staff and their players and whatever. If you went to the Brown camp, right, you were coached by the brown people, the army, so on and so forth. Because Walt was a, was a ref. The All American camp, the staff was the following. And, and this is, and I went to the camp for five or six years in a row, but here's your camp staff. Okay. And this probably 19 81, 82, 83, those type of years. Mm-hmm. Coach Moran from Cornell, coach Urich from Hobart, coach er, from Army. Oh my gosh. Um, later on, like Coach Scott Nelson at Nazareth, who's winning division three national titles. Right, right. Um, JB Clark coming up from Washington or wherever he was. Uh, and the bottom line is be because of that exposure. And I'm just scratching the servers every big shot. You know? I mean, you imagine Rickie Moran living in a dorm for a week, right? Yeah. Like every, he's got a team at camp, you know what I mean? That's what was going on. So Scotty Anderson at Harvard, he came, I mean, we had all kinds of guys. So anyways, that was my first real taste of, and so in sixth grade is when I, you know, fifth grade, I think I got a stick. Sixth grade is the first time I had a helmet on and played. My original sport was hockey. The only reason I became a goalie was I was about seven years old. Team didn't have, uh, um, a goalie. I thought the equipment was cool as hell. So I got in the hockey goal at that age, right? And then at 12 or 13, when it came time to play lacrosse, I just matched. I went right to the goal. So right. And, and so now back to All American lacrosse camp, that was really the first serious setting I was in prior. It wasn't a club game, it wasn't a school game. It was going to All American lacrosse camp and, and getting, and you know, of course Roy Simmons, my guy is here, you know, I mean, right. He's there too. Yeah. So that was, you know, that's amazing. That's the hook for me. And, um, that might be the best hook we've ever heard of. Yeah. Right. We've heard a bunch and, you know, it was the cool baseball, so my dad Right. I played a ton of little league baseball growing. I loved baseball. Right. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm trying to, you know, gently let my dad down that I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to a little quicker thing here. Right, right. So yeah, that's how I got hooked in the All American lacrosse camp. That's amazing. That is really something. I love that. And then, you know, getting back to your dad, Pete, we read, you know, he was a high school teacher, football coach. Was he a football coach eventually at Jamesville dewitt, or did he stay at West Tennessee? You know, that's a interesting, you did very unbelievable digging. So he, he was one of those guys, graduated from Syracuse at 21 and became a teacher and a coach, like, bang, by 22 years old, he's, uh, head coach. Right. So he coached for about 30 years at West Genesee. Wow. And retired from it pretty early, like early fifties. Okay. And he still had some, some gas in the tank. So he went jd, he went over to my school and, and helped with the JVs, that kind just to, you know, get out and have fun. He had an unbelievable, uh, coaching mind and, uh, and just, yeah, one, one of the great high school coaches of all time around here. That's awesome. Now, what influence did he have on you? Was our, our lead in? I can't, I mean, it's probably hard to say, so. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. He, huge, huge influence. So, as I said, as a little guy. All I ever wanted to do was get in the car with him and go to West Genesee football practice film. It didn't matter what was going on, game, practice, film, bus ride, I, I needed to be there. So it was funny growing up. So James Old Dewitt is on the east side of Syracuse. West Genesee is on the west side. Mm-hmm. So that was a school district where you were not allowed to bring your children to school. Like I was going to JD and I kept begging'em. I wanted to go to West EE and it wasn't even about. So in the meantime, they haven't lost a lacrosse game in that era. In during, during the eighties and 10 years, when, when I was a sophomore, we played him and Zil Bird was a senior. It was crazy. We got killed. Right? I mean, Mike, Mike Messer, who might be the best lacrosse coach to ever live at any level, right? Um, the, you know, that thing he was running was unbelievable. But I ironically, I, I really wanted to go to West Tennessee and play football for my dad. Yeah, it was my dream, that's all. Well, I finally wore him down my junior year. I actually transferred to West Genesee, played quarterback. Wow. He, he wasn't gonna break the rules. He made me move out of the house and I moved in with a friend of his in Camillas out so I could be legal. Oh my gosh. Right. And we, you know, we, we snowed him a little bit and said it was academically motivated. He, it was funny, he said, when I transferred from JD to West Jenny, I raised the IQ of both schools. Say, that was a great line. So that's who I grew up with, a guy like that, you know? Yeah, I know. You're, I know you're trying, you're just not very good. Um, you know, I mean, he's got lot of one-liners. That's awesome. Yeah. A lot of one-liners, you know, and again, the, the basis of whether it's lacrosse, football, basketball, whatever. But he was my, um, my, you know, core for toughness. Not making excuses, being on time, you know, not blaming people, being a good teammate, and that stuff is any sport, any sport you wanna dream of. How about if we, how about if we transition to. J m l and let's do that. You gotta love the one-liners, the saying, so many coaches, great and small dole out to their players. And in Matt Palin's case, it was his dad, a great football coach, dishing out these tips and quips and as dogs, Steve and I get older, we can see the truth and real life wisdom behind many of them. So I've entitled this mindset Minute old sayings real truths. We've all heard these old sports sayings before, the ones that sound kind of corny because coaches, parents and teachers have been saying them for what feels like forever. But here's the thing, they've stuck around for this long for a reason. They're true, and the truth has power. Here's one. My high school coach, doc Doherty used to say, tough times don't last, but tough people do. That's not just about sports, it's about life. Every game, every season. Every life event itself challenges us. The players who keep pushing who don't give in are the ones still standing at the end. The early bird gets the worm translation. If you put an extra work before everyone else, you're already ahead. Whether that's wall ball before practice, shooting after practice, or lifting in the preseason, the effort we make early on pays off later. There's no I in team. We all laugh when we hear it, but it's true. Lacrosse is the ultimate team sport. One player doesn't win championships alone. Success comes from trust, selflessness and everyone pulling in the same direction. Don't make excuses, just make plays. Excuses don't change results. If you drop a pass, miss a slide or lose a man, own it. And if the ref makes a bad call. Deal with it. Move on to the next play. Focus on what you can do, not on reasons why it didn't go your way. And finally, don't point the finger at others. Point the finger at yourself. That's about responsibility. Blaming teammates, coaches, or referees doesn't help. But when you take ownership of your own mistakes, your preparation, your role, you not only get better, you earn respect and make everyone else around you better. So yeah, these sayings might sound old school, even a little cheesy, but the reason coaches still say them is because they work not just in lacrosse, but in life. If we take them seriously and live them out, they'll carry us a long, long way. After all, look how far they've taken Matt Palem and now they've kept him on the straight and narrow and never into a place where there are no guardrails. speaking of no guardrails that so many of our listeners describe the college lacrosse recruiting trail. So we've responded by putting excerpts of our 10 best interviews with legendary coaches, such as bill Tierney, Lars, Tiffany and Andy towers. Into a book that you can access on Kindle, it is available on Amazon, under the title inside the recruiting game insights from college lacrosse coaches. Now we will return to our interview where Matt Palem discusses more about his relationship with his father. I. Ironically, he is responsible for me becoming. Ref. I was a freshman at Q. He was a high school teacher, football coach. He ref high school hoops in the, in the winter. Mm-hmm. I had a 73 Dodge Dart. I couldn't afford to keep gas in. And he, my fresh, I'm at Q as a freshman. My parents lived three miles from campus. He drags me to a basketball ref meeting when I'm 19 years old and Right. I got into it and it's funny, by the time I'm like a senior now, I'm like ING varsity high school hoops. My boys are in the stands, couple beers and I, you know, ling we had a good old time. So you got, you got used to the heckling at an early referee, right? Early right. I'd be leaving practice. I'd be leaving practice because the boys like, where are you? Like nodding him. That's hilarious. Keep that Dodge Dart running. Exactly. So. So, yeah, pops is, uh, you know, still alive today and, and, uh Oh, that's great. Still a, still a good guy to look at a game and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. He knows his stuff. That's so, no, he, he was huge, huge in my life. That is cool. So then you transferred back to Jamesville Dewitt. So, yeah, sorry, just curious. Played that football season and had all intention in staying and finishing my life at West Genesee. Yeah. But now it's like November crappy weather. None of my friends are around. I don't have a car. I'm stuck on the other side of town. Yeah. So, long story short, after Christmas I transferred back to jd. Oh man. So I never played lacrosse at West Genesee. Oh, wow. Yeah. And went from there. So yeah, finished, finished my life at jd. That's, that's cool. That's awesome, man. Great story. Yeah. What, you know, it's amazing, um, when you think of a sport today and the level of specialization. Yeah. And what these kids have to go through now. And you know, Jay and I talk about, and you were saying, you know, they, they're just, the camps was just so different than what it is today. Right. But, you know, recurring theme over and over with some of the great players that we've talked to is passion for other sports, you know, and playing multiple sports. And so can you talk about, it's clear how much you love football. Yeah. You know, basketball is a big part of your life. Yeah. And lacrosse. So can you talk about sort of your athletic development and, and what it was like playing those multiple sports coming up through jd? Absolutely. You're hitting my sweet spot in that it's the one thing that drives me nuts today with uh mm-hmm. You know. Just'cause you play 92 million games doesn't mean you're gonna be better and chances are you're gonna be worse'cause you're gonna lose interest. It's not gonna be exciting. You know, my favorite sport was whatever in the fall. It was football. In the winter. It was hockey. I never, ironically never played basketball. Oh yeah, hockey. Yeah. I was a, yeah, I was a football, hockey, baseball then lacrosse guy. And I loved, I remember baseball, you know, yanking up those stirrup socks and getting them right. You know what I mean? Right. Remember the old school? Oh yeah. I played a little, yeah. High pants. The stirrup way up to the back of your knee. I mean, we was into all that shit, the gloves. Right, right. I mean, loved it all and it, and it really saddens me and, and, and again, I think it's this whole. You know, the mighty dollar behind the whole club thing and you gotta be, you know, and the poor parents that don't know any better, I feel horrible for, I mean, it's hard enough to navigate as a, as a knowledgeable lifetime lacrosse guy. I can't imagine being Joe dad trying to sift my way through all this club stuff and know you gotta play in every tournament on earth and you gotta, right. The showcases travel to Zimbabwe to play in the triple club championship and Right. Yeah. There, there was a great clip on Instagram of guys like, Hey, you've just made the double turbo Las a all star like baseball team first tournament's in Zimbabwe. Or Right. It's only gonna cost you 28 grand. You're gonna love it. So you're a starter. Unfortunately, that whole thing and, and, and we're all guilty of it. The, the, all the sports, all of us. I, I. Schlep it out with my kid in the club thing who's now a junior at Albany. And the most happy thing about it is I never have to go to another club game in my life. Right. You know? Um, but no, I, I, it breaks my heart that, you know, if I could turn the clock back and tee it up one more time, it'd be a Friday night high school football game. You know what I mean? That Friday night lights. Yeah. That's amazing. Absolutely. And, uh, no, that's a, that's a huge thing, you know, that bums me out that we don't, that, that, that's funny, Matt. We don't encourage kid, or we even coaches that say, uh, you know, that kid wants to go do it, and that coach discourages him from I hate that. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's amazing too how many of the best college coaches, when they come on the show and talk to us about recruiting, they're looking for those kids who have played other sports. Yeah. Show me a tough football player. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They want those kids who have multidimensional skills and have learned Yes. From the, the toughness and the discipline and the execution of football. Right. Yeah. And then the athleticism that a basketball or a soccer or lacrosse, uh, brings. I was gonna say, I dunno if you guys watched the PLL games over the weekend, but ask Owen Hil if Chris Fake is a good linebacker. I don't know if you saw this, Chris Fake kind got a buddy pass and Hil, he tried to line him up and, and Faker got his stuff organized in time. It just Right. Like didn't break stride. Oh. And he was an unbelievable high school linebacker from what I understand. And I, yeah. That's cool. He looks like it. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. It's funny too, I played, I was a football lacrosse guy and and played both at Brown and we were the worst football team you can ever imagine at Brown. Right. Jake can attest to that. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. Yes, but Maddie, to what you say, when people ask me about playing both, I say, look, I don't care at what level it is walking out of a tunnel on a Friday night or a Saturday afternoon. There's nothing like it in sport. There's just nothing like it. Absolutely glad. But there's nothing fun about football practice except if you're aback. Except if you're a quarterback. You got a red Jersey on, put on your wet pants, get in the drill line and drill. Lacrosse. Lacrosse. You just love to go out every day. Right. You're playing. You just love to play the game no matter what. I love it. You know. That's awesome. That's awesome. So Jay, I think over to you, we're gonna turn to the SU years, I think. Yeah, absolutely. We're gonna get people up to speed a little bit. To us, the, the OGs. Yeah. Uh, so we'll run it through here. So you played at SU, as we mentioned, from 87 to 90, and just to review during the three years plan, those were years, lean years for the orange J 87 to 90. Oh yeah. It was tough. Things were tough there. Up in Syracuse, 88 to 90 orange winds, three national championships suffered only one loss. First game of the 89 season at Hopkins, losing 14 to 13, they avenge that loss in the national championship that year. 13 to 12 in gen outside that one loss basically go undefeated for three years. And then, you know, Syracuse is always associated with the high flying offensive talent. And then, you know, I, I knew Pat McCabe, I played with him on the team US 119 team. Great guy. And one of the all time best of course. Absolutely. And four time All American, you know, three or four time on team USA, blah, blah, blah. But then you had, mark Stoffer was an All American Eric Holbrook, Mino. Uh, you were the MVP of the tournament in 88. You had a lot of talent on defense that you didn't really hear much about. Then on the offensive side of the, of the game, you know, you've got Gary and Paul Gate, you know, considered potentially the best guys who ever played the game. John Zabar, I mean, a list of mile long of these other all Americans. So the, and so we wanna hear about some of these game memories, but first, what was practice like? I mean, honestly, that must have been crazy and, and to hear a little bit about Coach Simmons and how he'd run a practice, I'd be interested in that. So we'll let you run just on what practice is like. Sure, yeah, no, my, my, my opening line is, my running joke is, um, I'm the reason that the gates are such good shooters.'cause practice was such a bitch, you know? Right, right, right. I made them great. Actually, just the contrary. There used to be days where you don't touch a ball, bang, bang, bang, bang, you know, and if they got doubled, they'd flip it down to merit check and good luck with him on the doorstep. Right. Oh my gosh. Right, right. You know, talk about a confidence boost as a goalie every day. Jesus, thanks. Out the wazoo. Right. I got, I got my favorite story about that in the 89 game that we lost. This is Tommy Meek's freshman year. So this is Meek's first game ever. Gotcha. So he shows us. So I'm a, yeah, I'm a junior. He's a freshman. So he shows up at Qs and, and you had all Americans in front of him, didn't you? Yeah. Did he? Oh yeah. In front of Burns or somebody really good. Uh, Jimmy Egan, actually. Jimmy ended up Jimmy Egan. Yeah. Yeah. He was a big dude. And that was Marek Burns. Andi. So it was pretty good crew. Yeah. Crazy. But Marek in Protect in particular, and keep in mind, we haven't seen all this stuff like we've seen it today, right? Like these guys are doing, it was Zoom stuff, and you're like, what is that Canadian? What? Yeah. So again, he was unbelievable. Like the best inside finisher. I've ever seen, you know, I might stop him once every 20 times inside, so whatever. So anyways, and then the whole preseason, I'm like, little bit of a confidence Rattler, you know, you're like, yeah, God. So anyways, now, so now fast forward to the game we lose and uh, mayor Cha, he actually, the first game, EKK didn't start until later in the year, but like Simmy would slide him in there like two minutes into the game, you know? Ah, okay. I kinda remember that Jimmy. A little controversial, right? See what this guy looks like. So anyways, meek goes into the game. Never forget this. I have all the respect in the world for Quint. I think he's a great goalie. I always have. We played against each other in high school, in the Empire State Games and all that stuff, right? I think he's a tremendous goalie. Um, so anyways, one of the greatest performances ever. Him winning the title as a freshman, I mean, right? That was amazing. Yeah. So anyways, back to Quint. Ek, if you can picture this is, is on the side of the goal there. Quint like makes a savor. There's a loose ball and, and Meek's on the side of the goal. His, his feet are below goal line extended and the ball is like in the crease, but, but looses and Meek scoops it up again. He's behind the goal and quint's on the pipe and, and Meek's got a guy put, you know, on his back or whatever. Meek reaches back, throws about six fakes on Quint beyond Goal, unextended and sticks it. And I'll never forget, I go, I go, all right. Quick can. Quin can't do shit with him either. It's not just me. It's not just me. Was like Jesus. Right. What was that? He'd never seen him before, right? This is his first, right? Oh, right. What was that? What was that? Well, I remember Paul Gate winding up. I mean, he is like 15 or 20 hours out in that 89 championship. Huge windup, quint's. Standing there. Standing there. There's no one between him and Paul Gate to screen him at all. And all you see is Quint lean a little bit this way to the left, the littlest thing. And Paul Gate shoots it, stick side high, right in the corner. And Quint just does this. He just shrugs his shoulders, waves his hand. He's like, whatever. He turn turns and rag. Like he just unbelievable. And he did that to our goalie much multiple times. And so did Gary. Yeah. And I was like always trying to get an edge, so I'm like, snake was our nickname of Steve a, our goalie. I'm like, what are they doing? You're, you're lying on the ground and they're shooting high. He's like, they're faking me, man. Head shoulders. Doesn't matter. 20 yards out. I mean, it's, their sticks are bent. It's horrible. What's going on. Right, right. Their sticks are, are, are curved. I mean, they were out of this world. And one thing, John Desco, when he was running through his, when he retired, he was running through all these years and then he got to the point of the gates like every era, like there was this, there was that. And he's like, it just wasn't fair. And I'm like, thank you. Some validation. Exactly. That's what I felt like Exactly. I'm like, what is going on here? They were ridiculous. Meek too. It was just crazy. Yeah. The and the gates even more so than meek, the, the, the six, if they grew up here, they would've been like division one defensive backs or something. I mean, yeah. They were serious athletes fastest, didn't like, they're, they're like a lot of these PLL kids are now, right. I mean, we didn't have those kind of dudes running around with, they were the biggest, strongest, fastest, best skills. It was ridiculous. Well, and, and, and again, when I look back and, and, and you talk about that career that I've had, how lucky am I to show, oh, these dudes are coming here. Right. And nobody ever heard of, they showed up in January, they were over in the corners, like, what's this all about? You know, Bernie, Columbia, weird jeans, you know, like Yeah. They looked weird at first. You, they don't go right. You gotta go, right. Yeah. Right. They did not, it's not like they came and were like, oh shit, the gates are here. We're like, right. We got dudes. We don't. Right, right, right. We don't need them. Right. Fred cosplay here, you know? Right. Exactly. We got so Bernie, we, you know, you know, I mean, Hey, Matt, so that, that was, Hey Matt, can you, can you go back though to this. This piece that Jay was asking about the practice, I'm just interested it from like you were referring to it from a mental aspect. Right? On the one hand, they've gotta be pushing you every day. I mean, there's no way you're not gonna get better. Well, just hilarious. He said like some days I never talked ball. I'm the goal. Yeah. Some days I did not make it safe. I know that happened a couple times and I'd be late. How did you, how did you manage that sense of both, you know, you were, you know what I would do once in a while? Like I'd go with the seconds and go like, play against her. Yeah, yeah. Right From the other team. Get them on my team once in a while just to boost my confidence more the shooters. Yeah. Yeah. Right. No,'cause it was unbelievable and, and of course Coach Simmons, to your point, you know. We played five on four, broken drill for it seems like hours, you know, we'd five on four fast breaks. Yeah. Um, you know, just everything was always moving for Right. 90 minutes, you know, people out there two and two and a half hours, 90 minutes and you never, there was no like, stand there. He was not big on like one-on-ones. Like, do your one-on-ones in the context of what we're doing. You know what I mean? So there was not mm-hmm. He didn't want. Mm-hmm. People stand, and again, back then we don't have the facilities. So you're standing out there, it's fucking 32 degrees out and you know, like keep'em moving. He was always, let's keep moving this game. Yeah. All the good he goes, all the good teams I see move. He goes, let's keep moving. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. You know, he's very big, you know, X's and o's were hugs and kisses to him and, and uh, yeah. Yeah. But he knew what an athlete looked like and he knew, you know, I'll never forget one of my favorite Roy stories, big Roy stories, is, uh, Hopkins in the Dome in 87, and and and and and Hopkins in the Dome in 87, and and and and And, and, and what, what is one of your favorite Roy Simmons Jr. Stories, Matt, to find out. Tune in next week. Until we meet again. Here's to hoping you find the twine. We're signing off here at the get the lax scoop. Thanks again so much. We will see you the next time.