Mike Fiacco visited his old school at the perfect time. Had he not, who knows what would have happened.

The Hamilton College freshman was home for winter break when he returned to Jamesville-DeWitt (N.Y.) High School to work out.

That’s when he saw the J-D lacrosse players picking their numbers for the coming season. A thought immediately popped into his head: I want someone to wear my number. I want someone to wear No. 22.

The number was important to Fiacco. He’d grown up a Syracuse lacrosse fan — where the number has long held great historical significance — and had success wearing it in his four years with the Red Rams.

So Fiacco picked out Jordan Evans, a freshman he always knew to be a gifted athlete. The kind of kid who could step onto any playing field and immediately find success.

And, most importantly, play the game of lacrosse.

Photo Illustration by Drew Osumi | Staff Photographer

“I wanted to make sure 22 went to one of our top players, and asked him if he would take it,” Fiacco said. “Jordan was one of the best lacrosse players I’ve seen go through J-D, so he was an obvious choice to ask to wear my number.”

Fast forward two years and the same offer is on the table. This time Evans is sitting across from John Desko in the Syracuse head coach’s office, his mom Wendi on his right, the collegiate lacrosse world at his feet.

“I think we’d like to have you wear No. 22 here at Syracuse,” Desko said over his desk.

Again, Evans accepted.

“When Coach Desko offered that to me,” Evans said, “that’s when it was pretty much sealed that I was coming here.”

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All Gary Gait did was raise his hand.

He had grown up wearing the No. 22 as a lacrosse star in British Columbia, but when he got to Syracuse as a freshman in 1987, it was being worn by senior Chris Baduini and Gait wore No. 38.

So when Baduini graduated and head coach Roy Simmons Jr. gave out numbers a year later, Gait reverted back to his old figure.

A tradition was born.

“I had a lot of success at Syracuse and with that number,” Gait said. “And when I finished, coach Simmons challenged Charlie Lockwood to step up and be the next 22 and fill that number.

“It was a challenge to be the next star and the next All-American, and he did that, and then it just got passed on and on.”

Starting with Gait, now Syracuse’s women’s lacrosse coach, the No. 22 has taken on a mythical significance in the last 25 years. It’s not worn by Syracuse’s best player — that would be too objective. The No. 22 is handed to a player whose on-field dominance is only rivaled by the rest of his makeup, and who possesses the physical and mental toughness to lead a program with 10 national championships to its name.

After Gait it was Lockwood, followed by brothers Casey, Ryan and Mike Powell, Dan Hardy, Cody Jamieson and JoJo Marasco, who graduated last spring.

And now Evans will be the first freshman to wear the number since 2006, after joining the Orange as the No. 1 recruit in the nation.

“It’s just a number here,” Evans said. “Obviously there are all these great players, but it still is just a jersey.”

Yet it’s a number that demands excellence while fast-tracking players into Syracuse lacrosse folklore.

Gait won three championships with the Orange and then captured a title at every level of professional lacrosse. Mike Powell won two championships and has the most points of any player in program history. Last spring, Marasco graduated as the only player of the seven to not win an NCAA championship.

Jamie Archer — an All-American who played at Syracuse from 1990–93 — coached Evans in high school and gave him fair warning of what the number entails.

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The recreational basketball league that Evans played in growing up balanced talent across all teams.

That usually left him — one of the league’s best players — on a team with kids who had barely ever played. It allowed him to shine, and after games parents would ask Doug and Wendi Evans how their kid was so athletic.

“We never really had an answer to that one,” Wendi Evans said. “We looked at each other often, and wondered how he got so nice.”

One game, when Evans was in sixth grade, one of his inexperienced teammates was the only player on the team not to score. Evans passed him the ball before physically moving the defender out of the way to open a clear path to the hoop.

“It made that kid’s day,” Wendi said, “I’ll never forget that, and it’s just the kind of kid that Jordan is. Putting others first, always himself last.”

Evans has always found modesty where it could easily be lost. Away from the lacrosse field he excelled as a quarterback and won a New York state basketball championship alongside current SU center DaJuan Coleman.

And when he decided to zero in on lacrosse, his athletic pedigree somehow swelled.

“He came to a camp of mine when he was in the eighth grade and I knew he was special, just really special,” Archer said. “I knew the kind of player it would take to play in college and he was already it.”

Unlike most kids growing up in Central New York, Evans didn’t watch Syracuse basketball or football. He did watch Syracuse lacrosse on TV, from start to finish, and started going to games at the Carrier Dome with his dad when he was 6 years old.

It wasn’t so much of a Syracuse dream as it was fate.

But when Evans and his mother visited after his freshman season, it didn’t feel right. The weather was bad, the tour was underwhelming and it didn’t seem like they wanted Evans any more than the average high school prospect.

So Archer started molding Evans into the confident star Syracuse would not only want, but need after the departure of Marasco.

At the end of his sophomore season, J-D needed one overtime goal to clinch a second-straight state championship. Archer looked around the huddle at his seniors, then his juniors, then at the player who the team knew would get the ball along.

“Jordan’s not the kind to get nervous,” said Scott Firman, who played with Jordan at J-D and is a freshman defender at Syracuse. “State championship on the line and a sophomore is getting the ball. That doesn’t happen often.”

Evans ate some clock before charging down the field, making the opposing goalie fall and putting in the winning score. The entire team piled on top of him.

“That’s one I’ll always remember,” Evans said.

The next time Evans visited Syracuse, the mood was different. He was about to travel to the Washington, D.C. area with a travel team and Desko told him to keep his options open for the schools in that area.

Yet the coach had already given Evans an offer he couldn’t pass up.

“This whole 22 thing,” Wendi Evans said, “it’s like he was made for it. He barely even mentions it and probably doesn’t think about it too much.

“That’s just who he is.”

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Two weeks ago Evans stood in the lobby of Manley Field House with his white No. 22 jersey on.

He had just been asked about wearing the number yet again and he rattled off answers that now seem ingrained in his everyday speech. Then he posed for pictures and talked in front of a video camera — again, about the figure on his back.

But when the hoard of reporters in the lobby huddled around Desko, Evans drifted into the backdrop and next to the Syracuse lacrosse wall of fame, which hangs like a mural behind a crowd of national championship trophies.

Evans positioned himself in front of the 90s and 00s sections, where pictures of all the former No. 22s dotted the canvas.

There was Gait doing his patented jump shot. Ryan Powell hoisting a championship trophy. Casey Powell finishing a goal. Hardy staring stone-faced into the camera and Marasco charging down the field.

He stood there for a while with his lacrosse stick behind his head, his fingers barely gripping it while he cradled an imaginary ball.

Then — when his gaze finally broke off the timeline — the smallest smile peaked on both sides of his mouth.

Maybe he’ll be next.

Published on February 13, 2014 at 1:30 am

Contact Jesse: [email protected] | @dougherty_jesse