U.S. lacrosse team’s WP leader

Richard Tedesco

Richie Meade can still remember the times he spent as a kid in Kelleher Park in Williston Park shooting a lacrosse ball against a fence and fantasizing about his future exploits in lacrosse..

Last week Meade achieved something he’d never imagined – he was named head coach of the U.S. men national senior lacrosse team for its title defense at the International Lacrosse World Championship tournaments in Denver in July 2014.

Meade had been head coach of the U.S. Naval Academy men’s team for the last 16 years, leading his team to a 138-88 record until his resignation last May. He led Navy to the finals and the semifinals of the NCAA tournament in two seasons, but a national title eluded him.

“There’s at least 10 guys who could do as good a job as I can, so I feel very fortunate to be in this situation. You just have one shot with this, so I’m excited to take that shot and do as well as I can,” said Meade, who remains at the Naval Academy as a tenured physical education professor.

Meade’s lacrosse career began on Broad Street in Williston Park, where played catch with his friend Ronnie Ross before he joined the Williston Park Indians in the local lacrosse little league.

He maintains ties with those teammates from what was exceptional team at a time when youth lacrosse leagues were not as common as they are now.

“For five years, we were the best team and all of my buddies are still my buddies today,” Meade said.

His brother Peter still lives with his family in the Broad Street house where Richie Meade grew up with Peter and their brother Charles.

“I have a lot of fond memories of growing up in Williston Park,” he said. It was a great place to grow up during the time that I grew up there. It was like the ‘Wonder Years.’ “

After having early success with the lacrosse, Meade was eager to keep playing in high school. He went to St. Aidan School and was expected to follow his brothers to Chaminade, but he resisted.

“At that time, Mineola [High School] played lacrosse and Chaminade and the Catholic schools didn’t. So I convinced my parents to send me to Mineola,” he recalled.

Meade said he graduated with unimpressive grades and went to Nassau Community College, which happened to have a top lacrosse program.

“At that time, I was pretty lucky actually. When I was at Nassau, we had one of the best junior college teams in the country” Meade said

Meade said his lacrosse skills weren’t exceptional and he credits his Nassau Community College teammates with enabling him to transfer to the University of North Carolina, which was just building its lacrosse program .

“Because I played with the guys I played with, I got to go to Carolina with two of my teammates,” Meade said.

Meade said the two years he spent at Chapel Hill were a transformational experience in his life.

“Going to Chapel Hill really changed my mind about what the possibilities were,” Meade said.

It was while at North Carolina that he had his first thoughts about coaching lacrosse. His goal, he said, was to coach football, basketball and lacrosse at Mineola High School.

Meade played basketball, football as well as lacrosse in high school. He said basketball was his favorite and lacrosse his least favorite sport, but he didn’t have the size to play NCAA Division I basketball.

He had begun working towards master’s degree in parks and recreation administration at North Carolina, when he got the chance to work as an assistant coach under John Espy at Duke University. He then became an assistant coach at North Carolina in 1979.

He got his first head coaching job, at the University of Baltimore, one year later. Meade said the school was looking for someone who could teach recreation in addition to coaching.

“I didn’t plan any of this. I was a typical jock. I had the opportunity to be around very capable people. I had an inclination that I wanted to coach, and it worked out,” Meade said, crediting his roles as an assistant to “really good coaches” as the driving force in his career.

Those coaches included Willie Scroggs at North Carolina and Jack Emmer, a Hall of Fame lacrosse coach at Army and a Mineola High School alumnus who grew up in Albertson. Meade also credits the direction his parents gave him when he was growing up.

“My parents were responsible for a lot of it just by osmosis,” he said

After the University of Baltimore dropped its lacrosse program in 1983, Meade got a job at Navy as an assistant coach for five years and also taught physical education. He moved back to North Carolina as an assistant coach in 1989, serving as offensive coordinator and attack and midfield coach. In 1991, he went to Army as its offensive coordinator and attack position coach.

Meade returned to Navy as its head coach in 1995. The midshipmen got to the NCAA tourney in 1999 for the first time in five years, and then went to the tournament for six straight years from 2004 to 2009 under Meade.

During his 35 years of coaching, Meade returned to his home town to visit his brother and old friends while on recruiting trips to Long Island.

Meade is slated to make his first appearance as head coach of the U.S. men’s senior team at the US Lacrosse National Convention in Philadelphia, PA. He will present a session on leadership Saturday Jan. 14. He will also watch the current national team in action at Champion Challenge, a US Lacrosse event in which Team USA takes on NCAA semifinalist University of Denver on Sunday, Jan. 29.

Meade, who will be responsible for selecting the team for the 2014 tournament, said he will begin his tenture as Team USa coach by scouting Major League Lacrosse players through a working arrangement with the Chesapeake Bayhawks of that U.S professional league.

He said he will also scout all the collegiate players in the country prior to creating a 42-man roster in 2013 that will be pared down to 23 or 24 players in January 2014 for the run-up to the summer championship tournament.

“I’ll never get to coach a team with as much talent as this team is going to have. You have be careful not to coach them too much,” he said.

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