THE BUCKEYE
“HE’S LIMPING AROUND, ALMOST DRAGGING HIS LEG. I’M THINKING, ‘THAT’S THE GUY I FLEW UP HERE FOR?’ BUT HE
SET LIKE 50 PICKS ON ONE LEG.” — Nick Myers, Ohio State head coach
talking to was like, ‘Coach, give me a shot. I won’t let you down,’” Myers said. “That’s part of his lore. He’s really combatted a lot of that.”
In July of 2015, one month before Ohio State students were to return to campus, Myers flew to St. Catharines to watch Fannell play for the St. Catharines Athletics in a Junior A box game against the Toronto Beaches. “He hadn’t told me he had a knee injury,” Myers said. “I get to the arena. I’m one of the first people there and I’m watching him warm up. He’s limping around, almost dragging his leg. I’m thinking, ‘That’s the guy I flew up here for?’ But he set like 50 picks on one leg, and was obviously a selfless player.”
I 36 US LACROSSE MAGAZINE March 2017
Word was long out, especially in lacrosse circles. Steve Fannell was in and out of rehab, doing street drugs. Young Eric sat in the back of the room. Tears slid down his cheeks. Classmates poked fun.
f he had always showed his emotions when he was a kid, Fannell said he would have cried most of the time.
In fact, on one Father’s Day week in elementary school, the teacher asked kids to make something for their dad, but she didn’t even hand him supplies. “They knew I didn’t have a dad to make stuff for,” he said.
“It’s one of my toughest memories,” he said. A knee injury. That’s how Fannell explains what exacerbated his father’s addiction issues. Before they stopped speaking, and with Eric wanting to confront his own problems and avoid similar pitfalls, he asked his father—a Minto Cup champion with St. Catharines in 1990 and an NLL champion with the Buffalo Bandits in 1996, who started him off in lacrosse — about his past. He had already gotten into the party scene when he tore his ACL, but adding prescription morphine to the recovery was a recipe for disaster. “He’s probably in a halfway house, possibly prison, possibly rehab,” Eric Fannell said. “The only thing I know about him is that he lives in my city.” Lincoln Fannell said he speaks with his son regularly and that Steve is in St. Catharines, not working. “Having a tough time,” he said. “But life is
USlacrosse.org
©KIRK IRWIN
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