Even Gary Gait struggles to recall a time he’s failed on the lacrosse field.

The first-year Syracuse women’s lacrosse coach and former SU lacrosse star has succeeded everywhere. From national to world championships, from playing to coaching, to even his STX equipment line, Gait has thrived at almost every venture he’s attempted in the sport.

But he knows, maybe even obsesses, over the fact that he isn’t perfect. Yet.

‘There are two things I haven’t done yet,’ said Gait, often considered the greatest lacrosse player ever. ‘One is the U-19, I lost coaching Team Canada in the world championships, but I get another shot at them this summer. I get another crack at that, which is great.

‘And then (there’s) this.’

[ITALICS]This[/ITALICS] is coaching a lacrosse program at a collegiate level – the sport’s most visible stage. And that’s what brings Gait back to Syracuse. The school that put him on the road to superstardom in the late ’80s offered him a chance to check another accomplishment off his list. Gait, who led SU’s men’s lacrosse team to three national championships from 1987 to 1990, was introduced as the program’s head coach in August.

With his arrival, Gait brings loads of lacrosse awards and honors to a women’s lacrosse team that has never won a national championship, and naturally, he carries the burden that comes with clutching all that hardware. Gait will try to extend his Midas touch to one more challenge.

He inherits a women’s lacrosse team coming off its best season in school history, one that ended with a loss to eventual national champion Northwestern in the NCAA quarterfinals. Gait’s squad is the preseason pick to win the Big East – this is no rebuilding job. Now it’s his responsibility to take this team to the next step and earn a national title.

‘He’s won championships at every level,’ said Katie Rowan, a Syracuse senior and the Big East preseason conference player of the year. ‘So I feel like there’s that expectation.’

Gait is changing the way the Orange plays lacrosse, and if he’s triumphant, he could possibly influence the entire sport of women’s lacrosse. Rowan said the head coach has introduced moves to the team that are rare to the women’s game. He’s drawing up fancy techniques like underhand shots, sidearm shots and even behind-the-back shots.

He is the expert, after all. In a 1988 NCAA semifinal between Syracuse and Princeton, Gait undertook a unique plan for thwarting the Tigers’ zone defense. Gait dashed from behind the net, leapt into the air and extended his stick over the top of the goal, stuffing the ball into the cage. It was a fitting move for the Michael Jordan of lacrosse. Gait had invented the sport’s own version of a slam dunk.

The move forced more imaginative shot selection and rule changes. The defining moment of Gait’s legacy had been set.

There’s even a running joke with this year’s team about the ‘Air Gait.’ One of the first times Gait showcased that skill came after he returned, dressed up, from an interview. Everyone on the team watched as the 40-year-old Gait performed his signature move – while still wearing his church shoes.

Gait ambled off the field taking a seat on the metal bench along the sideline to catch his breath. He admitted he’s feeling a bit out of shape.

OK, so the gray-haired Gait might be losing some of his stamina, but the pinpoint accuracy that he was so famous for – that’s still there.

Perry Thurston, a freshman goalie, gushed there’s no better way to improve goaltending skills than having a legend hurl shots at you.

His influence pervades to the men’s side, too. John Desko, the Syracuse men’s lacrosse head coach and an assistant during Gait’s time at SU, already had his former pupil hold a shooting clinic for the men’s team.

In the year before arriving in upstate New York, he coached the National Lacrosse League’s Colorado Mammoth to a national title in 2006. In that same year, Gait captured the one title that always had eluded him as a player. At age 39, Gait scored four goals for Canada in a historic 15-10 upset over the American squad in the 2006 World Lacrosse Championship. Winning at the collegiate level could serve as Gait’s final test.

Not that Gait ever tires of his old challenges.

‘I don’t know if he gets bored,’ Paul Gait, Gait’s twin brother and former teammate at SU, said laughing. ‘I know he likes to win, and he’s proven that his entire life. And this presents another opportunity to keep winning and keep challenging himself in the locker room.’

Gait appeared to be living the life of a retired sports superstar when he received the job offer from SU Director of Athletics Daryl Gross. It was summer, the offseason for the Mammoth, and Gait and his family had joined the team’s General Manager Steve Govett for a sponsorship retreat on the shores of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

There, Gait fielded a call from Gross asking him to return to his roots. On the sunny beaches of Mexico, the star scoffed at the notion. But after mulling it over with his family, including his 14-year-old daughter, Taylor, who Gait hopes to coach one day, he started to take the proposal more seriously.

It soon became a deal Gait couldn’t refuse.

‘Obviously the offer was a pretty impressive one,’ said Govett, a fellow British Columbia-native and one of Gait’s closest friends. ‘Opportunities like this don’t come along for very long.’

When Govett and Gait talk about Syracuse now, it’s always about the head coach’s plan to put the women’s team ‘on the map.’

And perhaps he’ll even make a name for himself on the women’s level. Sure Gait won seven (yes, seven) consecutive national titles as an assistant coach at Maryland from 1995-2001. Yet his distinction among women’s players appears to have room to grow.

A few Syracuse players admitted when Gait was hired to replace Lisa Miller, who accepted a job at Harvard after the 2007 season, the team knew who Gait was. But they had to do a little research to realize he was [ITALICS]this[/ITALICS] good.

On the men’s side it was unthinkable to grow up playing lacrosse and not be aware of Gait.

Sean Morris, a member of the NLL’s Chicago Machine and the handpicked face of Gait’s STX products (along with Rochester’s Joe Walters), remembered when he first started competing, he’d see a player jumping from behind the cage and scoring on every single NCAA highlight. One day Morris asked his friends, ‘Who is this guy?’

‘My friends looked at me like I had six heads.’

It’s for this reason Gross declared Gait’s arrival at Syracuse a great day ‘for the country’ when he announced Gait as SU’s head coach.

‘To have Gary here carrying the flag for women’s lacrosse here at Syracuse,’ Gross said at the press conference. ‘It’s just going to spread all over the country. It just gives the sport more credibility.’

Despite the vote of confidence, Gait has tremendous expectations at Syracuse. He’s coaching a program that’s ready to win its first championship. And it’s understandable why Syracuse would rely on Gait to accomplish that feat as soon as possible.

Sounds tough, but Gait can put it in perspective without much effort. All he needs to do is to remind one to take a look at his track record.

‘I’m a head coach of a college team,’ Gait said. ‘It’s my first year. And if my trend continues – it’ll be a good year.’

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Published on February 12, 2008 at 12:00 pm