The Daily Orange is a nonprofit newsroom that receives no funding from Syracuse University. Consider donating today to support our mission.

R

ob Genco knew he had to get his youth Upstate FCA Lacrosse team up to the Carrier Dome. His 11-year old players kept asking about Chase Scanlan — the Chase Scanlan — begging Genco to try and get him to attend one of their practices. They were in awe that Genco had coached Scanlan for two years in high school, that Genco even knew him.

One of his players’ parents had snapped a photo of their son holding a U.S. Lacrosse Magazine that featured Scanlan on the cover in his new Syracuse jersey. Another sent a similar portrait, this time with their son reading the article. So, Genco bought 100 tickets to the Orange’s 2020 season-opener against Colgate, Scanlan’s first game with SU after transferring from Loyola. Both of Scanlan’s parents and other family members were in attendance, along with Genco, his players and their families. All found it much easier to make a two-hour trip to Syracuse instead of a six-plus one to Loyola, in Baltimore. 

They all rose in anticipation as a pass swung to Scanlan with six minutes left in the opening quarter and he ripped a bouncing shot past the Colgate goalie. Two minutes later, they rose again. Then, for five more goals throughout the rest of the win. “It was a dream come true,” Scanlan said postgame.

After leaving the press conference underneath the Carrier Dome, Scanlan tossed on a sweatshirt and circled back to the 100 level, where Genco and his players waited — posing for photos in front of a shuttered concession stand. It reminded Genco of when Scanlan interacted with every waiter and every customer when the two would eat pregame dinners at Aunt Millie’s diner three years earlier. In between bites of his chicken finger melt, the Silver Creek High School sophomore star who totaled 104 goals and 75 assists that year made small talk. They had all the time in the world then.

When he was a freshman at Loyola in 2019, though, and was tallying the most goals by a first-year midfielder that year, the same community wasn’t present. His mother, Heather Kettle; his father, Thomas Scanlan; and occasionally a cousin or two could make the games, but that was mostly it. 

Scanlan thrived in the small-town, tight-knit environment of the Cattaraugus Reservation of the Seneca Nation of Indians in Irving, New York, but he left after his sophomore year at Silver Creek. He had to, he said, if he was going to improve to a point where a professional career could follow. A transfer to IMG Academy represented the first step. 

That transfer started a two-year period where Scanlan traveled to Florida, Baltimore, British Columbia, Israel and Toronto to play games. “Lacrosse sticks (have) taken him far in life,” Thomas said. But even after all those trips, all those opportunities to showcase his development as a player, he ended up back in the transfer portal after one year with the Greyhounds.

“I talked to my family, and they were like, ‘We can come to your games. Your community can come to your games,” Scanlan told The Daily Orange last January. “I’ve never had a thought of leaving (Syracuse), I’ve never had a thought where I don’t like this place. I love it.”

So, maybe this was where Scanlan needed to be: In the Carrier Dome against Colgate, positioned by the post, donning a white Syracuse jersey emblazoned with “22,” twirling his stick while waiting to receive the pass that led to his first goal. Maybe this was the spot — the exact spot he wanted to be in as a ninth grader, but changed his mind three years later — and he had finally realized it.

• • •

Richard Kettle didn’t want to keep explaining how to make lacrosse sticks. That wasn’t how he learned from his grandfather Francis, another traditional stickmaker. He learned by watching, by doing it himself, by trailing alongside to cut down hickory trees from the woods and splitting them into 13-foot logs. He wanted his grandson, Scanlan, to do the same. 

Scanlan helped with stick-making so much growing up that those first two steps, and the others after them, have become ingrained in his mind. Split the logs into four pieces. Drop them in boiling water. Bend and shape them into the stick. They worked together in Richard’s garage or basement, sometimes just sitting outside for hours when the time came for the shaving. 

“He tries to teach them and show them, but it’s a craft, it’s a skill that artistic ability is involved as well,” Heather said.

Other times, they crafted smaller, narrower sticks for snow snakes, a traditional Native American game that Scanlan competes in every winter. He and Kettle spent Friday nights preparing their sticks with teammates, waxing, shaving and fine-tuning so they’d travel the fastest down the track the next two days — adapting to the snow’s conditions, whether it was rainy, wet or frozen.

When Saturday came, they piled into cars and traveled to different reservations around New York. Sometimes, these roadtrips came on little sleep, as late hours of the night extended into the early morning as Scanlan, Richard and the rest of their team continued to work the sticks. Scanlan, as a third-rater, throws on Saturdays, the starting point for him to eventually rise to second-and first-rater — meaning he’d throw on Sundays, the final day. 

Charlie Scanlan, one of his uncles, made a track behind his house every year, allowing Scanlan and his cousins to come over and practice throwing, said Blade Garlow, Scanlan’s cousin. They grew up together in Irving, at that track and on the Gil Lay Memorial Arena floor, tagging along with their parents to Newtown Senior B leagues at night. They were the ball boys during the games and ran onto the field at halftime. Scanlan would be in net and would stop shots his older cousin Clay fired at him from mid-field, bridging the time before they arranged pickup games themselves almost daily a few years later. 

From the earliest points of his lacrosse career, Scanlan went with cousins to the Gil Lay or Cattaraugus Community Center, five minutes from home, and spent days acclimating to the sport. If all the pickup trucks were lined up in the parking lot one-by-one next to each other — Scanlan the red one, Clay the silver one, Tommy Scanlan the black one — that meant everyone was there. They’d all pile their sticks in the middle of the arena floor and had one cousin toss them aside into two piles to make teams.

Scanlan began to shape his lacrosse style in those games. He modeled the way he finished shots and scooped up balls like a “vacuum” off Clay, who now plays in the National Lacrosse League. He watched how Zed Williams, currently in the Premiere Lacrosse League, consistently ripped off 100-mile-per-hour shots that were controlled. 

If they didn’t have enough players to have a goalie, or if there was no net, they’d play “post,” where each shot off the iron counted the same as a normal goal. Other times, they strung water bottles to the corners or put a board across the net and left just the corners open. And after hours of back and forth, sometimes stretching into the final hours of the night, the losing team bought Gatorade and chips from the Seneca One Stop on the way home.

“There’s a lot of talent and pride and everything right in our reservation,” Scanlan said. “That’s the beautiful thing about the game of lacrosse, because it brings all of us together.”

• • •

Ten months after watching her son play at Syracuse for the first time, and then watching the final seven games of the season evaporate, Heather had her son home for the longest period of time since he left for IMG Academy. COVID-19 canceled everything related to lacrosse, except for the occasional pickup game on the reservation, so Scanlan purchased a boat, looked at adding a jet ski and picked up shifts pumping gas.

Heather joined Scanlan on his boat as he navigated the water, sitting behind him on the white seats while her son steered up front. She couldn’t remember the last point Scanlan could fathom having enough free time to purchase a boat and make it worthwhile. He didn’t have a graduation party after high school because he was traveling for the Minto Cup and other tournaments, and he didn’t come home for more than one weekend that summer before heading to Loyola. 

“It’s been years that he’s been traveling around like that,” Heather said.

When they finished for the day, the boat returned to Heather’s yard, where it sat in between uses until Scanlan sold it to Heather’s cousin later that summer.

At Loyola, Scanlan never had time but always wished he did. He missed the first of two orientation weeks at Loyola with his freshman class in June 2018 because he played lacrosse in British Columbia and the Under Armour All-American game, creating a gap between him and his freshman teammates that only widened throughout the season. The first month of the fall semester, Scanlan spent his weekends a mile away at Johns Hopkins, hanging out with a former teammate and his friends from the All-American game.

“The first month, the guys kind of already had their own cliques and stuff, and I was kind of like an outlier,” Scanlan said. 

For his first year of college, Scanlan was stuck at a place where he didn’t want to be. Loyola’s location made it too far for most of his family and community to come visit, and it was too far away for visits home when homesickness resurfaced. He hinted to some at a possible transfer during the 2019 season, but he didn’t want to cause a distraction midway through a run that ultimately ended in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Heather didn’t realize her son was transferring until his name was already in the portal.

Scanlan’s homesickness had been something he dealt with since his initial season at IMG Academy, where he transferred after playing for four seasons on Silver Creek’s varsity team, first as a goalie and then out in the field. The opportunity to play for the Ascenders emerged because of a relationship between his family and Mark Burnam, the head coach at the school. 

In between practices, Scanlan’s homesickness forced him to make trips back to Irving outside of the traditional semester breaks. The first time it happened, Thomas looked for options to bring Scanlan home when it got bad, trying to combine feasibility with price in case this happened more than once.

He settled on an Allegiant Air ticket that cost $39 each way, taking Scanlan directly from Florida to Niagara Falls — about an hour-long drive from Irving. Scanlan roomed with Clay his first year at IMG, but that didn’t quell the homesickness, either. “Just stick it out, everything’s good,” Thomas told him that first time, and on each of the other five trips across the two years at IMG.

Even after he transferred to Syracuse two years later — as close to home as he could get while still playing for a top collegiate lacrosse program — the homesickness didn’t completely vanish. It resurfaced for the first time in the early days of November, when he missed his mother, his little sister, his family. 

Scanlan made the drive home after a Friday lift for the weekend. And when he returned, perched at his same spot inside the Syracuse locker room, sandwiched in between Zach Lee and David Lipka, he was right where he needed to be.

Banner photos by Will Fudge | Staff Photographer, Jordan Phelps | Staff Photographer and courtesy of SU Athletics. Design by Nabeeha Anwar | Illustration Editor and Emily Steinberger | Photo Editor

Published on February 17, 2021 at 9:34 pm

Contact Andrew: [email protected] | @CraneAndrew