LI's Kevin Cassese used lacrosse skills to rise to top

Kevin Cassese realized as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t keep this schedule going for much longer. Cassese knew even before picking up his first lacrosse stick in Port Jefferson that his future was in sports. As the son of a high school football coach, Cassese’s first love was football. But   in his junior year of high school, Cassese realized his future was in lacrosse.

And was he ever right. Cassese parlayed a scholarship to Duke University into a 16-year tenure as head coach of the men’s lacrosse team at Lehigh University. But during the early stages of his transition into coaching, Cassese couldn’t depart from his playing career.

In 2007, Cassese was four years into being a professional lacrosse player in Major League Lacrosse and became a first-year head coach. He continued to play professionally for Philadelphia that first year.

But he realized he couldn’t  sustain that lifestyle. The demands that come with being a Division I head coach are daunting enough. But he had one more goal: Making it to 2010. That year his college coach, Mike Pressler, would be coaching the U.S. men’s national team in the world lacrosse championship and that’s how Cassese wanted to end his playing career. He not only made U,S. team, he captained it. Team USA won the gold and Cassese has never played in any lacrosse game since. 

“Knowing this was going to be my last push and last opportunity to play at that level, it was very emotional,” Cassese said. “But it was kind of the penultimate moment for me to cap off my career and to do it with Mike Pressler at the helm was really special.”

Cassese said he owes a lot to Pressler. The former Duke head coach recruited him out of Comsewogue High School after what Cassese said was a huge junior season for him when   he helped lead the team to the 1998 Long Island and state Class B titles. Cassese also served as an assistant coach at Duke prior to becoming the Lehigh head coach. He wanted to play for Pressler one more time.

“I haven’t [played] just because that memory of that last game is something I want to make sure sticks with me,” Cassese said. “Obviously I’ve been around the game coaching it but I felt playing in that final game in 2010, nothing’s going to ever match that. I may play again at some point but for now, I’m very content that’s how my career ended.”

The path to that career started as a young boy in Port Jefferson. He remembers being a water boy at Comsewogue football practices for his father, Tom, and aspiring to be on the field one day. Cassese was the quarterback for three years at Comsewogue, including on the 1996 Long Island Class III championship team.

“It was awesome and he made it easy because he was such a special athlete,” Tom said. “Sometimes if that wasn’t the case, it becomes an issue but it was never an issue because of his athleticism and his leadership and that’s carried on because after playing all these years, he’s become a great coach.”

Cassese played four years of boys lacrosse at Comsewogue, winning the Suffolk Class B title each year. He was also an All-Long Island football player his junior and senior years. He originally committed to Duke with the intention of playing football after his freshman year but decided to just focus on lacrosse. That decision certainly paid off as he was an All-American and ACC Player of the Year as a sophomore.

After 16 years at Lehigh, Cassese has decided to reunite with Lars Tiffany as the associate head coach/offensive coordinator at the University of Virginia for next season. Tiffany gave Cassese his first coaching opportunity at Stony Brook in 2004 before Cassese returned to Duke the following year. The University of Virginia is a constant among the top men’s lacrosse teams in the country and lost in the semifinals of the NCAA Tournament last year.

“I just felt it was the right time for a change and I had the opportunity to rejoin coach Tiffany at UVA at a program that’s perennially in the hunt for a national championship,” Cassese said. “I felt like it was the right time for a move.”

He’s extremely proud of his time at Lehigh though.

“They took a shot on a young kid,” Cassese said. “I was 26 years old when I got the head coaching job at Lehigh and now 16 years later as a 42-year-old, I felt like I poured everything I possibly could into that Lehigh program and more. My goal was to leave it in a better place than I found it and I feel like I achieved that.”