FERDA
An Open Letter to Wasatch Lacrosse
Before we get to the game, let me tell you something about the stick in your hand.
Lacrosse has been in my blood for as long as I can remember. My family. My outlet. The thing I ran toward when I didn’t have words for what I was carrying. It was the first language I learned that my body understood before my mind did. I didn’t know until much later that the game was built for exactly that.
Lacrosse is the oldest team sport in North America. The Haudenosaunee people, the Iroquois, have been playing it since at least 1100 AD, and they’ll tell you it’s older than that. Older than recorded history. Part of the creation story itself. They called it the Creator’s Game. They played it as medicine, to heal the sick, to settle disputes between nations, to honor the dead. Games could last days. Fields had no boundaries. Hundreds of men. No helmets, no pads, no rulebook. Just the game.
The Haudenosaunee name for it roughly translates to “they’re bumping hips.” The original contact sport.
When a community member fell ill, they organized a medicine game on their behalf. The belief was that the energy of competition, the spirit of the players, the movement of the game itself carried healing power. They played for something bigger than the score.
I spent years playing this game before I understood that. And then I got cancer, and I understood it completely.
I want you to know as you take the field this season. You are holding something ancient. Something that was built to heal, to unify, to connect people to each other and to something larger than themselves. The modern game has changed a lot since then. But the best players I’ve ever watched, the ones who made you feel something, they played like they understood what the game was actually for.
Play like that.
Now. Let me tell you about the guy who coached you.
That’s me in high school. Rib pads that apparently nobody uses. Hair that I thought was a good idea. A dry Colorado field in March that smelled like early spring and ambition. I played this game before I coached it. I coached it before I really understood it.
It put me on fields in Colorado, in Utah, eventually across from kids who would become the team I’m writing this letter to.
I was never just coaching for the season we were in. I was coaching for this one.
I’ve been waiting to write this letter for a long time.
Some of you I’ve known since you were in single digits. Let that land for a second. I was there before you had a two-man game. Before you had a slide package. Before you knew what a face-off was. I watched you trip over your own feet on a field that looked enormous to you then, and I thought: these kids are going to be something.
I wasn’t wrong.
Every time I told you to find the open man instead of forcing the shot, every time I made you run the same play until it was muscle memory, every time I got on you for ball watching instead of cutting, I was making a deposit in an account you’re about to cash.
You’ve been building a language together since third grade. The other teams you’ll face this season? They’re still learning to talk. You’re already fluent.
That’s not an accident. That’s years of work. Yours and mine.
Now let’s talk about what wins championships.
Attack the guy who just recovered from a slide. He’s gassed. He reset, he thinks the play moved on, and his feet haven’t caught up with his head yet. You know where the ball is going before he does. That’s not a trick. That’s what you’ve drilled. Use it.
Two-man games aren’t just an offensive concept. They’re a mindset. They say: I trust you. I know where you’re going. I don’t need to look. That kind of trust takes years to build, and it cannot be faked on film. The teams you play this season don’t have what you have. They haven’t had the same guys in the same field since they were eight years old.
Play as you know it.
Here’s the culture I want you to build this season, and I mean build deliberately, not accidentally.
Make the other teams feel your history before the opening face-off. Not trash talk. Not theatrics. Presence. The way you warm up, the way you communicate, the way you play the first two minutes sets a tone that is very hard to walk back. Set it high and early.
Win with purpose. Lose with information.
A healthy fear of losing is not the same as fear. It’s respect. It’s the thing that keeps you sharp in the third quarter when everything is tied, and the other team thinks they’ve figured you out.
They haven’t figured you out. You’ve been playing together since you were eight. There are layers to your game that they haven’t seen yet. Trust that.
And when you lose, because you will at some point, everyone does, don’t let it be wasted. Losing that teaches you something is not a loss. It’s tuition. The teams that go deep in May are not the ones who never lost. They’re the ones who lost early, learned fast, and didn’t repeat the mistake.
Build that culture. Make it uncomfortable to lose. Make it unacceptable to learn nothing from it.
I have to tell you about the last game I coached manny of your older brothers.
They were playing Alta. Losing. And half of them were already mentally at the senior party, which, honestly, I understood but could not accept. I needed them on that field. So I did what any reasonable, emotionally regulated adult coach would do.
I headbutted Owen Erker’s helmet.
Full commitment. Trying to spark something. My head hurt for a week. I don’t know if it worked. What I know is that I would do it again, because that’s what the game asks of you sometimes.
Some of you watched that from the sideline. Some of you heard about it afterward. Now you’re the ones on the field. And you’ve logged more hours, more reps, more film than that group ever did. You came up in a different era of this program. You don’t need someone to headbutt you in the helmet to wake you up.
You already know what this costs. Play like it.
I’ve watched you grow up on that field.
From kids who couldn’t catch a pass to athletes who can read a defense three moves ahead. I’ve watched you fight with each other and come back the next practice because you loved the game more than you loved being right. I’ve watched you become a team in the truest sense of the word, not just players who happen to wear the same jersey.
I coached you to be something. You became it.
The Haudenosaunee say there’s a simultaneous game going on in the sky world, and the ancestors are playing with us. I don’t know about all that. But I know that the medicine game was built to heal, to unify, to connect people to something larger than the score. When you play this season, play like you know what you’re holding.
Hold your heads proud. Not arrogant. Proud. There’s a difference, and you know what it looks like because I showed you both.
Set the tone early. Play your game. Trust your teammates. Build the culture. And go take the state.
I’ve been watching this day come for a long time.
No Quarter Given. FERDA!
~Tyler