Media Day with Syracuse MLAX Head Coach John Desko

This week Coach Desko sat down with Syracuse Media to discuss how the men in the orange have been doing so far and what they've been up to. 

The first topic that was the shift in focus since last year's short but sweet season. The Syracuse Men's Lacrose team ended the 2020 season with a 5-0 record ranked number one in the country, and Coach Desko the team's attitude and their mindset has shifted ever since that day. They have an ever greater fire lit underneath them than they did before. This is especially true for those seniors who returned for a fifth year to play. There are five returning red shirt seniors, all of who have something to prove this last year of play. 

Practice has been different too. The Syracuse Men's Lacrosse team was not allowed to start practicing up until a few weeks ago, so they have been working their way gradually into full-filed drills. Coach Desko said that in the beginning, the team predominantly focused on smaller group drills that were predominantly low impact. There was a reason for this.

"A lot of fall sports went at it right away...there were a lot of injuries," Desko said. "We approached it differently, talking with our strength coaches and trainers. We wanted to make it a more gradual process, building up before we got really physical."

The results of that philosophy showed. Coach Desko said that his injury list is very small at this point in the year compared with previous years. Now Coach Desko has expanded the drills at practice, ranging from clears and rides to man up/man down situations. Towards the end of their fall practices he plans to get into full field scrimmaging so that he can try out different combinations of defensemen, midfielders and attackmen with hopes of finding combinations that work. 

Recruiting was another big topic of discussion, since it was so different this time around. This summer, coaches at the Division 1 level had all types of restrictions on what they could and could not to when it came to the recruiting process. The most notable restriction being that coaches were not allowed to attend summer tournaments in person. What did this mean for coaches like Coach Desko? 

"Everything was pretty much off film and memory," Coach Desko said. "That's how we went forward. It was something totally new for us," he said.

This way of recruiting was new for everyone, and it made a lot of coaches and players alike feel uneasy about the process. Coaches were missing out on the chance to see kids play in person and athletes were missing out on campus visits. It was a lose-lose for both parties. That being said, Coach Desko still found a way to win out, recruiting 13 players so far in the class of 2022, including 3 5-star recruits (including the number one ranked recruit in the country) and 6 4-star recruits as ranked by Inside Lacrosse. Syracuse Sports Illustrated has full coverage of all of those commits and their process of committing to Syracuse. To read more about any of them, you can click here. 

On the topic of recruiting, Coach Desko also pointed out that there are several key differences between recruiting for sports like basketball and football. First, the likelihood of going pro in lacrosse is slimmer. 

"With other sports, players are looking to get into the pro ranks whereas with lacrosse, you are also looking more at what you are interested in academically," Coach Desko said. "Some of the ivys have done extremely well because players want to pursue academics." 

Additionally, there is a financial component to the recruiting process. Coach Desko mentioned that for the entire roster of guys, they only have 12.6 scholarships to give out. That equates to about 3 per class. When you are recruiting classes as big as 13 guys, or even more on occasion, there is only so much money to give out. If the fit doesn't work financially, then players often need to pursue different schools. The price to attend Syracuse each year hovers around 73,000 dollars. 

The last topic brought up was one of the most exciting changes that has happened this year: a newly renovated home field. Coach Desko said that the team got the opportunity to have their first practice inside, and him and the team weren't disappointed.

"It had a professional stadium kind of feel," Coach Desko said. "How the lights are positioned, the interior, the lacrosse championship banners that are up...it was really cool to be in there." 

But Coach Desko didn't only want the guys to experience the Dome because of how awesome the renovations are, but rather so they could get used to all the new changes before they played in there for real.

"I wanted the whole team to get in the Dome...I didn't want them to go in there for the first time for a game in the spring and not have even a little bit of a home field advantage." 

There is still a lot up in the air about whether or not there will be a spring season, and more information is expected to come in the next few months.