Dave Pietramala’s journey to becoming ‘synonymous’ with Johns Hopkins lacrosse

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Without extensive training programs, Johns Hopkins’ newest class of recruits conditioned through pickup basketball before their freshman season in 1986.

Everybody was competitive, James DeTommaso said, but one lanky, 6-foot-3 defender named Dave Pietramala immediately stood out in games that were simply meant to be a workout. He dunked, scored with either hand, played tough positional defense and constantly ran the floor in transition, Greg Lilly said.

When lacrosse began that spring, Pietramala had to wait to transfer his skills from hardwood to turf after contracting mononucleosis. His first playing opportunity came nine games into the season at Navy, where he immediately soared down the field after picking up a ground ball and hitting the pipe with a shot, Lilly said.

“The way he could keep up with really fast players and take the ball away, he would run it like a fast break,” Lilly said. “Two of our coaches just looked each other in the eye and they said ‘Oh, he’s got to stay in.’”

Following the Navy game, Pietramala etched himself into the Blue Jays’ defense, eventually leading them to the 1987 national championship. Eighteen years later, he became one of the only collegiate men’s lacrosse players to win a title as a player and a coach, leading Johns Hopkins to the national championship in 2005 before winning it again two years later. He “typified” Johns Hopkins lacrosse and is “synonymous” with the program, former teammates and players said. And on Sunday, he returns to Baltimore for the first time as Syracuse’s defensive coordinator.

As a player at Johns Hopkins, Pietramala regularly put together complete games, James said, making plays on both sides of the field. But even if he wasn’t playing his best, Pietramala became someone the team relied on for timely plays.

When the Blue Jays faced North Carolina in the 1987 NCAA Tournament quarterfinals, Pietramala struggled throughout the majority of the game. But using his reach — which also helped him block shots in basketball — Pietramala wound his stick over teammate Jack Crawford’s head late in the game, hitting the ball out for a key turnover to help Johns Hopkins escape 11-10.

“He would see where we needed a spark and rise to the occasion,” Lilly said.

Lilly attributed Pietramala’s ability to move past mishaps during a game to becoming a “free spirit” on the field, as he was willing to take risks for the big play. The same occurred when the Blue Jays practiced, as Pietramala would turn up the intensity for two to three hours and make plays his teammates envied.

“Whether it was a scrap with a midfield or attack, he always played like it was the championship,” Lilly said. “He never disappointed.”

Under defensive coordinators Fred Smith and Bill Tierney, Pietramala learned how to synthesize his individual abilities with the team’s defense. The defensive system preached that the six defenders and goalie were completely responsible for Johns Hopkins’ success or failure, said John DeTommaso, who played alongside Pietramala in 1986. That understanding of how a team’s defense could influence the outcome of a game helped Pietramala as a coach, too, John said.

“You can’t play great, without understanding the intricacies of the game,” John said. “He had that as a player and as a coach.”

Pietramala took the job as Johns Hopkins’ head coach in the summer of 2000 after serving as the defensive coordinator from 1995-97. Pietramala preached the same defensive strategies he learned as a player, helping players like Matt Bocklet and Tom Garvey develop into some of the best defenders JHU had seen since he was a player.

“That was ingrained in us,” Garvey said about team defense. “A lot of the drills we did in practice was sort of the ethos of Johns Hopkins lacrosse and working as a team.”

Pietramala pushed his players individually, Bocklet said. In his first team meeting after transferring from Fairfield, Bocklet saw on the white board that he was paired up against Paul Rabil, generally considered one of the best attacks of all time, for his first one-on-one matchup of the 2007 season. Rabil scored on Bocklet with ease, he said, but the decision showed Pietramala’s confidence in his newest player.

In the winter months, Pietramala split the team into individual groups, picking up a stick to show his players what he wanted them to do, Garvey said. He taught the defenders where their hand positioning should be on their stick behind the goal and where to put their stick on their opponent. “He empowered us with all the information we needed to be successful,” Garvey said.

When his players didn’t meet their potential, Pietramala was brutally honest with them, multiple said. During his senior year, Garvey got scored on five times by Syracuse freshman Mike Leveille, and Pietramala spent more individual time with Garvey to get him to the level the team needed. At a meeting following a dismal 2004 freshman season, Pietramala told goalie Jesse Schwartzman that he wasn’t working hard enough. Schwartzman took that to heart for the rest of his career, earning the NCAA Tournament’s MVP honors in 2005.

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Players appreciated that Pietramala didn’t shy away from the truth. He already had deep relationships with each of them, starting with a crab feast at his house after the first day of practice, leaving Old Bay seasoning, crabs and hammers on picnic tables in his backyard.

Pietramala once gave Garvey a ride after practice in an attempt to get to know the then-freshman before the season started. He played “China Cat Sunflower” by the Grateful Dead before breaking down game film with Bocklet. And Pietramala always had an “open door” policy in his office, where players spent evenings critiquing their own practice tapes.

After Championship Weekend losses in 2003 and 2004, everything culminated in 2005 for the Blue Jays. Pietramala took off the gas a little bit, Garvey said, as the team already had pressure from the failures of previous years.

The notoriously intense coach emulated his laid-back persona off the field when it came to lacrosse, giving his players Mondays off that season, Garvey said. Johns Hopkins went on a perfect 16-0 run to win the program’s first national championship since Pietramala was a player.

But in 2007, Pietramala experienced a start to the season unlike any he’d experienced. The Blue Jays had lost three straight games for the first time in school history, and were having the worst season in almost a century heading into their game against Maryland, Bocklet said.

Pietramala took some risks with the lineup that day, starting players who hadn’t played most of the season like midfielder Austin Walker.

Walker had his “coming out party,” Bocklet said, launching the Blue Jays second-half run. After Rabil scored the game-winning goal in overtime, players slid across the mud while their head coach watched from the sidelines. With Pietramala’s changes, Johns Hopkins didn’t lose for the rest of the season.

“Pietramala taught us to learn from a little adversity,” Schwartzman said. “He epitomizes Hopkins lacrosse just from the style of play, the intensity of his coaching. You can’t talk about Hopkins lacrosse without mentioning Pietramala.”