| Profile: Joe Yevoli of Syracuse |
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Growing up on the hallowed lacrosse grounds of Long Island, New York, Joe Yevoli had one dream, to be an elite college lacrosse player. So his father, Joe Sr., a former star player at North Carolina, sold his bar and devoted his energy to molding his son into a top performer on the lacrosse field.  When he was in high school, Joe Jr. sometimes wished he didn’t have so much help. On more than one occasion, his father forbade him from seeing his girlfriend. It wasn’t that Joe Sr. disapproved of the girlfriend. Instead, he believed that his son’s first priority should be playing lacrosse. When Joe Jr. had dedicated sufficient time to perfecting his shot, then and only then could he leave the house. Joe weighed his options and went to see his girlfriend anyway.And before Yevoli would run the track at St. Anthony’s in preparation for his senior lacrosse season in high school, his father would dust off his old Tar Heel weight vest and shove it toward his son. Joe Jr., though, laughed at his father’s insistence and left the vest at home. A pattern seems to be emerging. “If my dad was going to tell me to do something, I would deliberately not do it just to kind of make him mad,” Joe says, laughing. “Me and my dad are two of the most stubborn people on the entire planet.” Less than a year later, the younger Yevoli was well on his way to achieving his dream. He needed only to decide where to live out his college lacrosse fantasies. The suitors were many, but it was easy to narrow the options. On the one hand, he could play at Syracuse like seemingly every other premiere recruit from the powerhouse high school lacrosse teams of Long Island. On the other hand, Joe Sr. was rooting for his son to play at North Carolina. Joe thought about it and picked Virginia. Two years later, Yevoli stood in the middle of the Ravens’ stadium in Baltimore and followed the familiar routine of searching out his father in the stands. In fact, except for four games, Joe Sr. has attended every athletic contest that the younger Yevoli has ever participated in. Holding eye contact with his father, Yevoli raised the 2003 NCAA National Championship plaque. As a freshman, he’d been selected ACC Rookie of the Year, and now, as a sophomore, he was a second-team All-American. And perhaps just as satisfying, his dad had to admit that Yevoli had made the right choice in Virginia. Joe Jr. was winning the battle of the stubborn Yevolis. That’s not to say that things at Virginia were perfect, but Yevoli was living out his dream as a first-class lacrosse player. With Virginia’s program dominating college lacrosse, it was easy to smile as the 2004 season began. Then, one spring afternoon in the weight room, as Yevoli performed a set of hang cleans, an exercise he always considered a waste of time, he felt a pop in his spinal cord. A season of excruciating pain commenced. The trainers began a month-long process of teasing from Yevoli details about the symptoms he was experiencing. “In my family, when someone gets hurt, we don’t really describe our pain too well,” he says. But after a two-game stretch in April during which he failed to record a point, Yevoli finally agreed to submit himself to an MRI. It revealed three fractures in his vertebrae. Once again, it was decision time. And once again, Joe Sr. had an opinion: having incurred such a serious injury, Yevoli’s season was over. That was an order. Yevoli heard his father out. Then he decided to play. In fact, once he began cortisone shots, Yevoli’s play improved dramatically, but after the smoke cleared, Virginia had stumbled to a dismal 5-8 record, and the condition of Yevoli’s back was gloomy as well.  When the next fall arrived, the pain in Yevoli’s back was unrelenting, such that he couldn’t play without the cortisone shots. Yevoli felt he had no choice; he would have to redshirt the upcoming season. After breaking the news to Coach Dom Starsia, Yevoli walked slowly past Klöckner Stadium. He had never felt so alone. He was no longer a lacrosse player. He was a New Yorker lost in Charlottesville.Yevoli was never as aware of this fact as when, minutes before the first game of Virginia’s 2005 season against Drexel, he found himself dressed in street clothes, sitting by himself in a crowded locker room. The Virginia team’s cliquey social scene had never been so apparent to him. The kids from Maryland and Virginia were hanging out in one corner, the guys from upstate New York occupied another, and then, there was Joe. “There were two other kids from Long Island there but they were both younger than me. Those were the only kids from Long Island,” recalls Yevoli. “All the rest of them were from the South, or small towns upstate on Long Island, which is in a way like the South. I was kind of isolated, so it was hard to relate a little bit.” Another facet of life in Charlottesville that began to vex Yevoli was southern culture. Although he initially chose a destination so far from New York in part because he was excited by the prospect of the unknown, now that he was out of uniform, Yevoli began to notice that the South wasn’t so charming. “The South is a little weird, you know?” he laughs. After living 30 miles from the Big Apple for 18 years, Yevoli found the pace of Charlottesville to be grinding. “I love New York, I love New York City, and when you get outside it, well, I really don’t have that great of an opinion. It’s a whole other lifestyle.” Charlottesville’s distance from home wasn’t just hard on Yevoli. Even with his son redshirting, Joe Sr. still attended every game. But Joe Sr.’s passion for seeing the games was severely tested by the 370-mile trek from Massapequa to Charlottesville. “Everything about that year was so frustrating, just sitting on the sidelines and just watching,” recalls Yevoli. “In one-goal games especially, I’d think, I could have had that goal. My redshirt year was my choice, and I almost felt guilty the entire year.” It was May 19, 2005, two days before Virginia played Navy in the NCAA Quarterfinal. Although he still had one year of athletic eligibility left, Yevoli had already graduated from Virginia, and in his mind he repeatedly envisioned himself packing up and leaving Charlottesville for good. He called Coach Starsia and asked him for a release to explore transferring. Coach Starsia’s response to the request would only make Yevoli’s year more difficult. Yevoli felt that Coach Starsia implied that he had faked the extent of the injury and that it was Yevoli’s plan all along to sit for the year and then transfer. “I’m not saying that that was what he was saying, but that’s the way that I saw it,” says Yevoli. “I can’t really blame him because I guess it does kind of look like that, but it wasn’t the case. That hurt a lot.” “I’m a different person because of my dad’s illness.”
Faced with Starsia’s refusal to pen the full release, Yevoli appealed to University President John T. Casteen, who finally freed Yevoli in late July. Although transfer opportunities had become scarce by that point, two teams still in the hunt were Yevoli’s top choices: Syracuse and Johns Hopkins, where he could play under Coach Dave Pietramala. “He and I have a really good relationship,” says Yevoli. “I respect him a lot, and he was definitely the biggest reason why I thought about going to Hopkins.”Ultimately, though, Yevoli couldn’t pass on the chance to play for the Orange. ‘Cuse’s up-tempo style of play closely mirrored the fast pace he was accustomed to at Virginia, and the school was significantly closer to home. He enrolled at Syracuse in late August. And Yevoli was immediately impressed by the camaraderie he observed in Syracuse’s team. “My first week I was here I went over to another kid on the team’s house, and the entire team was there. That really didn’t happen that much at Virginia.” But in late October, Yevoli’s life, which finally seemed back on track, was interrupted once again by a single telephone call from New York. Joe Sr. had cancer in his leg and lungs. The doctors advised that he had a 15 percent chance of survival. Less than a week later, Yevoli was home in Massapequa caring for his father, and soon he would withdraw from the fall semester at Syracuse.  When he wasn’t spending time with Joe Sr., Yevoli pursued an extremely regimented conditioning program, which called for a barrage of running, jump-roping, and weight-lifting. His goal was to be in the best physical condition of his life so he could dominate college lacrosse in the spring, and he did it all for his father. “This could actually be the last time that he gets to see me play ever, and that scared the hell out of me,” Yevoli says. One dark winter day, just before Yevoli headed out for an afternoon run, Joe Sr. pushed something across the table toward his son. It was the Tar Heel weight vest. Yevoli thought about it and strapped it on.As the winter months passed, Yevoli realized he had never felt so close to his father. “I’m a different person because of my dad’s illness,” he says now. “It’s brought me closer to my entire family and made me realize how important my dad is to me. He was my coach for pretty much every sports team I’ve played on. I owe a lot to the guy. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.” Benefiting from a controversial alternative to chemotherapy called Cellect, Joe Sr.’s condition gradually improved. His cancer, however, is not yet in remission. Yevoli rejoined Syracuse’s team in January, and he is a star lacrosse player once again. He has rediscovered the identity he lost during that frustrating season in Charlottesville and maybe even understands that identity a little better these days. He is 23 pounds lighter, yet stronger and bridling with intensity. Of the win over Army this past weekend, Yevoli says, “things got me going a little easier.” He was riding more than he ever had. “After working so hard, in my mind, if I don’t play as hard as I can, I’m letting myself down.” This weekend, Yevoli returns to Charlottesville to play against his old team. He can’t wait to see his former teammates, and this past week he’s been instant messaging a few of them. “I definitely love the kids on the team,” he says. However, he does have one concern: “I’m kind of worried that I’m going to get booed.” But Yevoli knows he’ll have at least one ally in the crowd. Despite his illness, Joe Sr. plans to attend all of his son’s games this season, as usual. Off the field, Yevoli, who is enrolled in Syracuse’s graduate School of Information Studies, must begin to contemplate a life after college lacrosse. His father, a varsity assistant lacrosse coach at St. Anthony’s, thinks his son would make a great coach as well. Yevoli has considered his father’s advice, and he agrees completely. For two of the most stubborn people on the entire planet, father and son have been agreeing an awful lot lately. Photos courtesy of John Strohsacker, LaxPhotos.com Matt Fuchs played lacrosse in high school and club ball in college, and he currently lives in Baltimore. He can be contacted at matt@laxpower.com. |
