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two things that stuck out the most. From the weight room, to fi lm study, to shooting extra, he certainly put the time in.” In Rabil’s freshman year, led by a determined senior class, the Blue Jays ended a 17-year championship drought and went 16-0 to win the NCAA title. Rabil emerged on the scene in an early- season game in the Carrier Dome against Syracuse. He scored four goals playing on the fi rst midfi eld and fi nished the season with 23 goals and 14 assists. Two years later, the boys in Columbia blue won again. Rabil was named the MacLaughlin Award winner as the nation’s best midfi elder. He left Johns Hopkins as the program’s career points and goals leader, and with a 3.53 grade point average. He was a Tewaaraton Award fi nalist in 2007 and 2008, but if there’s one fact that may surprise you, it’s that he never did win college lacrosse’s highest individual honor.
Plenty of accolades have followed for the two-time MLL Most Valuable Player and 2010 FIL World Championship MVP who led Team USA to a gold medal- clinching win over Canada in England.
***
Heels basketball coach Dean Smith was revered, too. It went as far as this: during an in-person recruiting visit to the Rabil household in Gaithersburg, Md., there was a Tar Heels’ throw pillow on the family couch. Pietramala told then-Blue Jays assistant Seth Tierney to sit on top of it while the Johns Hopkins staff made its pitch. “I think we need to replace this,” Pietramala said before he left. Rabil made offi cial visits to several schools, back in the times when top programs were still recruiting high school seniors. He liked what he heard from the then-current crop of Blue Jays, who were hell-bent on winning a national title. Superstar Kyle Harrison, with whom Rabil has reunited in the tryout process for the 2014 U.S. men’s national team, said as much during the visit.
“The commitments from the coaching
staff and the boys in the dorm, and what their goals were, sold Paul,” Allan Rabil said. “He looked at it and said, ‘This is the most serious group I’ve seen about wanting to win the national championship. That’s the boat I want to be in.’” They wanted him, too.
“When Paul came on his recruiting trip, he already looked like a college midfi elder,” Harrison said. “His size, the way he carried himself, you could just tell he was a big-time athlete. Once he arrived, his work ethic and desire to be great are the
A Publication of US Lacrosse
Rabil talks about the Rabil brand, building it, cultivating it and always staying part of the game. He wants to play into his late 30s, which would mean about 10 more years. He’s married now, tying the knot in January, but still likes to DJ in his spare time. He spends a lot of time interacting with fans online, traveling from camp or clinic to promotional appearance, training session or game. Rabil often talks to campers about the learning difference he grew up with — auditory processing disorder, which can make reading and writing excruciating. The condition manifested itself on the lacrosse practice fi eld, by Rabil repeating shot after shot, as if he were reading line after line of a book. Rabil recently hired a full-time executive director to lead his charitable foundation, whose mission is to help children with learning differences, including dyslexia, which number in the millions. His sister has it.
The past year included Rabil’s fi rst sports-related
surgery in September to repair torn abdominals that bothered him throughout last MLL season and forced him to sit out of the initial round of Team USA tryouts at the end of last summer. He spent time in the fall rehabbing and standing on the sideline at U.S. evaluation events. He was back on the fi eld for January’s Champion Challenge. “This tryout process was challenging for him because he couldn’t be Paul Rabil,” said Pietramala, a U.S. assistant coach. “He expects to win the gold medal. He expects everybody else to work as hard as he does to do that. Aside from the tangible — his ability to play the game and impact the game and those around him — for this team with some younger guys and newer faces on it, he brings experience, an expectation of success.” That trait, Rabil’s father surmises, is the common thread in the kid with the bowl cut’s career to date. Why pick Johns Hopkins? Why go pro in lacrosse? “He was blessed with talent to play on
the fi eld,” Allan Rabil said, joking that if he knew his son would grow to be 6-foot- 3 and 220 pounds and be able to dunk, he would have encouraged him to play college basketball as a point guard. “He took off with it. That’s what happened. It was him willing to take a risk, willing to put his heart and soul into it and see where it would lead.” LM
42 MAX SEIBALD
PRO TEAM: Lizards COLLEGE: Cornell ‘09 HIGH SCHOOL: Hewlett (N.Y.) HEIGHT/WEIGHT: 6-1, 215 AGE: 26 TWITTER: @MaxSeibald42 DAY JOB: Owner, Maximum Lacrosse Camps; Operator, LC New York club program
“In 1994 I went to Camp Starlight in northeast Pennsylvania over the summer,” Seibald said. “I picked up the stick as part of a required period, but ended up quickly becoming obsessed with it.”
99 PAUL RABIL
PRO TEAM: Cannons COLLEGE: Johns Hopkins ‘08 HIGH SCHOOL: DeMatha (Md.) HEIGHT/WEIGHT: 6-3, 220 AGE: 28 TWITTER: @PaulRabil DAY JOB: Pro lacrosse player, entrepreneur
“Character is what you do when no one else is watching,” Rabil said of his best advice heard from a coach.
June 2014 >> LACROSSE MAGAZINE 41
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