team’s top offensive player, and the Jack Emmer “Nutcracker” Award as its most physical — for the third straight season. Army coach Joe Alberici said Thul is the most physical player he’s ever coached in nine seasons at West Point, and for nine seasons before that as a Duke assistant. Team USA offensive coordinator Jeff
Tambroni just calls Thul different, and an animal, both in the best ways possible. “He’s a difference-maker,” said
Tambroni, who coached against Thul and Army when he was at Cornell, which defeated the Black Knights in the 2010 NCAA quarterfi nals. “It was so diffi cult with him because of his size, because of his strength and his range. As a fl at-out bull-dodger, he’s a load for any defenseman because he’s athletic, strong and fearless going to the goal. It takes about 1.5 guys to stop him.” Thul’s matchup-nightmare status has translated to the Team USA fold, where he is among seven attack candidates, and 30 players overall, in the running for the fi nal 23-man roster for the FIL World Championship July 10-19 in Commerce City, Colo.
During an initial round of tryouts in the heat of last summer, Thul led all players with eight goals. He impressed again throughout several fall evaluation events, and then was named MVP of the highly scrutinized Blue-White intra-squad game at Champion Challenge in January. Throughout, Thul has played with the
attitude that he needs to show he’s more than just a big left-handed goal scorer — that he can be versatile, something the Team USA coaching staff has placed a premium on. Tambroni said Thul has impressed the U.S. staff with his work to be a complementary player with or without the ball and ability to learn new schemes. He also did it as a rookie with Major League Lacrosse’s Canadian- infl uenced Hamilton Nationals (now Florida Launch) and indoors with the National Lacrosse League’s Philadelphia Wings. Thul said he’s worked well in the evaluation process with ball-carrying types like Rob Pannell, Marcus Holman and Steele Stanwick.
“A lot of people see 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds and they’re thinking slow, but I went out there and I was just fl ying around to show them I’m fast and strong,” Thul said. “The other thing I wanted to show is that I could score in a lot of different ways. I’m not an outside shooter, I’m not a dodger, not an inside fi nisher. I’m all those things, and all those things off-ball, too. One of
A Publication of US Lacrosse
my concerns going into tryouts is that I wasn’t an off-ball guy. In order to make this team, that was something that I had to focus on.”
Thul is an Army offi cer, currently
serving as an athletic intern for the Army lacrosse program, helping with administrative duties and coaching the prep school team until August, when he’ll head off to infantry training in Fort Benning, Ga. Normally, athletic interns at Army are allowed just six-month terms, but after Thul made it through Team USA tryouts last summer and realized a spot in Denver was possible, he started calling generals and colonels in an attempt to have his time extended through the world championship. It worked. “The only other people that get to do what I’m doing, training for their sport, are Olympic athletes and people who compete at the national level when they are in the Army,” Thul said.
So why Army? Through a family connection, Thul always saw Mike Kamon, a 2003 West Point graduate who played lacrosse at Army, as a role model. Kamon was the son of a college fraternity brother of Thul’s father, and the latter would attend games at West Point in New York with Garrett growing up. Kamon gave Thul his fi rst sticks when he was in second grade in Tewksbury, N.J. By the time he was in high school, Thul was recruited by Army, Navy, Delaware, Bucknell, Towson and Fairfi eld to play lacrosse. Navy was his second choice. Thul also played linebacker and tight end on his high school football team and considered playing football at Army as well. After this summer, Thul will leave for training and serve three years in an infantry unit before he pursues his long- term goal of becoming an Army Ranger. “He doesn’t have to do anything more to make me proud,” said Alberici, an assistant on the gold medal-winning 2010 U.S. team. “But if he was able to be on that fi nal 23, to have an Army soldier, a future Ranger wearing the red, white and blue, and representing his country in another way out of the Army fatigues, that would be a real proud moment for our program, this institution.” LM
“A lot of people see 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, and they’re thinking slow. But I went out there, and I
was just fl ying.” — Garrett Thul on Team USA tryouts
May 2014 >> LACROSSE MAGAZINE 71
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