Trio of Maryland alums help U.S. defeat Canada in World Lacrosse final

When the 23 members of the U.S. men’s national lacrosse team started jumping up and down on a field in San Diego to celebrate their newly minted World Lacrosse championship Saturday, University of Maryland alums Jesse Bernhardt, Michael Ehrhardt and Matt Dunn embraced each other first before mobbing their other teammates in a scrum.

“I think they happened to be some of the first guys I could get my hands on,” Bernhardt said.

But it was more than happenstance. The trio are close. Although from different recruiting classes, they overlapped in College Park, each graduating from 2013 to 2016. Years later, with the relationships intact, they played key roles in a difference-making defense as Team USA pursued a gold medal in the 30-nation, 11-day world championship tournament.

So, after the mission was accomplished with a 10-7 win over Canada in front of 15,112 fans in the early evening at San Diego State University’s Snapdragon Stadium, the three former Terps standout defenders instinctively found one another. “To have our careers meet again in a moment like that was awesome,” Bernhardt said.

Bernhardt reveled in the win. The eldest of the group at 32, the three-time U.S. team member who is the defensive coordinator at his alma mater and a new dad to a newborn boy back home in Maryland, hugged everyone he could. He hoisted a U.S. flag and notably grabbed 21-year-old Brennan O’Neill — the lone college kid on the roster (from rival Duke), who scored five goals in the final — and screamed “congratulations” in his face.

“He’s good at what he does,” Bernhardt said afterward, kissing O’Neill’s sweaty forehead. For, as intense as Bernhardt’s postgame reaction was, his mind was surely with the son his wife, Erin, gave birth to Wednesday, and he took the first flight back to Baltimore on Sunday.

The postgame image encapsulated the story of the final, though. O’Neill, a rising senior at Duke and reigning Tewaaraton Award winner as the nation’s best college player, provided half the U.S. offense, scoring five unassisted goals on a number of punishing alley dodges punctuated by shots with pinpoint accuracy.

Meanwhile, the U.S. defense composed largely of former Terps stars limited Canada’s talented offense just enough. The game was nip and tuck until the final three minutes, when the U.S. pulled away on O’Neill’s fifth goal and a Matt Sowers empty-netter with 1:09 to go.

The steady, strong Bernhardt, a 2013 Maryland alum, started on close defense alongside Dunn, a 2016 Maryland grad and Loyola Blakefield alum. Ehrhardt, the 2018 world championship MVP, manned the U.S. long-stick midfield position before leaving the game in the third quarter with an injury. Ehrhardt’s exit shuffled the lineup and put more pressure on the rest of the U.S. defense, which was game for the challenge.

“Selfless, connected,” Bernhardt said of the unit, and he credited Team USA assistant coaches Joe Amplo, the head coach at Navy, and Charley Toomey (Loyola) for picking the right guys. “Obviously, there’s a ton of talented dudes out there, but the ability to just have guys in and out throughout the whole tournament, we never skipped a beat. That’s a testament to the unit and the connectivity. No one guy was going to be the guy, and everyone was able to play into their role.”

Among other things, in the third quarter, Bernhardt slid to double crafty veteran Canadian finisher Curtis Dickson and stripped him with a perfectly timed stick check near the goal. And, in the fourth quarter, after Canada pulled within a goal at 8-7 with under six minutes left, Dunn and Bernhardt combined to force another turnover that set up O’Neill’s final goal charging down the left alley with 2:26 remaining.

Perhaps an overlooked difference in the entire game was Team USA’s four-player short-stick defensive midfield unit, including Zach Goodrich (Towson/Kent Island). They battled a gaggle of skilled Canadian players known for, ideally, wearing opponents down with long possessions and invoking tricky pick-and-roll games that create mismatches and confuse defenses.

Not this time, though.

“Extremely fundamentally sound,” U.S. head coach John Danowski (Duke) said during the television broadcast of the final about the unit, which had not allowed an even-strength goal even by halftime, when the U.S. led 4-2.

Danowski sounded a lot like many opponents of Maryland since John Tillman became the elite college program’s head coach in 2011. The Terps defense is rooted in fundamental approaches to attackers, constant communication and a lack of flashy takeaway checks. It doesn’t make for highlights often, but the defenders’ proper footwork and patient stickwork force shooters into low-percentage scoring chances.

Maryland has produced some of the best defenders in the game, including Bernhardt and Ehrhardt — two of the three U.S. team captains — and Dunn, who are on pro rosters in the Premier Lacrosse League. And now Bernhardt is teaching the next generation as Maryland’s defensive coordinator for the past six seasons. In him, the U.S. literally had a coach on the field. That is not uncommon at high levels of lacrosse. Many pros are also college or high school coaches, but Bernhardt’s experience was notable given the stage.

“He’s one of the bright young coordinators in the game and will be a head coach in a matter of time,” ESPN analyst Paul Carcaterra said of Bernhardt, who is originally from Florida but has lived in Maryland for more than a decade, with brief coaching stints at Rutgers and Princeton ahead of his current run in College Park. “When you think like a coach and you still have your athleticism and you still know how to play at an elite level, that combination is lethal.”

Two other Maryland alums, attackman Matt Rambo and midfielder Connor Kelly, were on the U.S. roster, too, as was another player with local roots, former Virginia attackman Ryan Conrad (Loyola Blakefield). Conrad now has won gold medals with the U.S. under-19 team and the national team. The five Terps on the 23-player U.S. roster were the most of any college.

The win gave the U.S. its 11th championship in the sport’s flagship international event that began in 1967, and it marked Team USA’s first back-to-back tournament championships since 2002. The Americans and Canadians had alternated gold medal wins over the past two decades of the typically quadrennial tournament, which was bumped back a year because of the pandemic.

Bernhardt and Ehrhardt were two of six returning members from the U.S. team that beat Canada 11-10 in a controversial finish in the 2018 world championship game in Israel. The U.S. also edged the Canadians 7-5 in this tournament’s opening pool play game June 21.

End Lines

• Earlier in the tournament, in a 19-3 win over Team Israel in the quarterfinal round, former Cornell star Rob Pannell became the U.S. men’s program’s all-time leading scorer, surpassing the 67 points put up by National Lacrosse Hall of Famer and Baltimore resident Mark Millon.
• The Haudenosaunee, more commonly known as the Native Americans of the Iroquois Confederacy and considered the originators of lacrosse, claimed third place for the third straight tournament, beating Australia 11-6 in the bronze medal game.
• This was the last men’s world championship staged by World Lacrosse, the international governing body of the sport, before the International Olympic Committee will decide lacrosse’s fate for inclusion in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The IOC will consider a new six-on-six version of lacrosse, a scaled-down, faster-paced adaptation of the conventional 10-on-10 men’s field game, and the 12-on-12 women’s game. A decision should come during the next major IOC meeting in October in Mumbai.

Corey McLaughlin is a veteran writer and editor who has covered sports in Baltimore for a decade, including for Baltimore magazine, USA Lacrosse Magazine and several other publications.

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