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SALT LAKE CITY — There were a lot of things Josh Stout thought about in continuing his lacrosse career as it wound down at Lone Peak High School.
Academics was a big one for the future nursing major. So, too, was competing for titles, as any player will tell you.
But more than anything, he wanted to make a difference on his collegiate team.
In his first season with Utah lacrosse, Stout scored a team-high 38 goals to go along with 11 assists, including six games with four goals or more, while leading the No. 9 Utes into the Men's Collegiate Lacrosse Association Division I playoffs for the first time since 2005.
“I hoped I would (contribute immediately). That it actually paid off, though, is more than I could’ve hoped for,” Stout said. “In high school, it was always my goal to play for a team that I could contribute in my first year. That was a big decision in where I went to school. I didn’t want to sit on the sideline until my junior year.
“I honestly couldn’t have gotten to this point without my coaches and teammates pushing me in the fall.”
The freshman attacker would not have to wait until his junior year to contribute for a strong team. The eighth-seeded Utes (10-6) will face ninth-seeded Chapman (10-6) in the tournament's opening round Monday, May 8 at UC Irvine. Top-seeded BYU (14-4) will face Miami (Ohio) in a first-round matchup.
After half a decade of mediocrity, the No. 9-ranked Utes finished with a 10-5 regular season record, including a 4-1 mark in Rocky Mountain Lacrosse Conference play. They clinched the division’s regular-season title with two games to spare and were undefeated in league play before a 14-8 loss at No. 6 BYU.
It was a turnaround and a historic season, by any means, for the Utes, who compete outside the NCAA and without the benefits of scholarships and stipends like many of the athletic department-sponsored teams at the U.
“We work as hard as any NCAA team would,” said freshman attacker Stout, who led the team with 38 goals. “We come in and practice hard, but we also love each other. We are a team, through and through. That’s the difference this year than other years. We’re together, and that’s been the difference.”
A program that had fallen on hard times — its last above-.500 record came in 2010 — is in the midst of a stunning turnaround. In the first season under head coach Brian Holman, the Utes went from six-straight seasons of a sub-.500 record to one of the 10 best teams in the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association and the program’s first bid to the national tournament since 2005.
And yet the on-field success isn’t the point for Holman, a national championship-winning goalkeeper coach at North Carolina who has spent 31 years coaching lacrosse at the youth, high school, club and collegiate levels.
“Sports is a metaphor for everything you do in life,” Holman said. “We treat our kids like men, and when I’m angry, I tell them. When I’m hungry, I kiss them and hug them.”
The work, like most turnarounds, didn’t start in May, though. It started with a long series of weeks on the Ute Soccer Field, several months in advance of the 2017 season.
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It was the first week of classes in August 2016 when Quinton Swinney first met with his teammates.
The sophomore goalkeeper had an eye on the starting job with the Utes — if only he could make it through the brutal preseason conditioning courses.
“I wasn’t in the best shape or ready to go; I was throwing up,” Swinney recalled later. “But they put us to the test — weight lifting, running and all the high-intensity drills we did. It gets tiring.”
Stout thought he was in good condition for a lacrosse player, but years of preparation at Lone Peak High School didn’t prepare him for what he saw in those early days of sprints, ladders and basic attack drills like how to avoid shooting underhand.
“It was a hard transition,” said Stout. “In high school, I thought I pushed myself hard. But you throw classes on top of it and you can’t hardly make it through the afternoon.”
The brutal schedule wasn’t for everyone. As a club sport at Utah, lacrosse players routinely juggle school, work and practices without the aid of a scholarship or stipend money, unlike many of their friends in athletic department-sponsored sports.
Eventually, the taxing workouts and lack of a scholarship took its toll. The Utes’ roster by opening day was down to 29 players.
“A lot of kids don’t want to sacrifice and commit to something greater than themselves,” Holman said. “The 29 young men that stuck with us are tough dudes. They’ve worked hard, and they are committed to something greater than being a lacrosse guy. Our program will have a greater purpose than just lacrosse.”
While most MCLA rosters have numbers in the 40s and 50s, the Utes continued on with a skeleton crew under 30.
But then something happened: They started winning. Utah opened the season with a 12-9 road win over defending national champion Chapman. The Utes won seven of their first nine games — two more victories than the entirety of their 2016 season.
Nationally, spectators started taking notice. The Utes found themselves receiving votes in the MCLA’s national polls. A division that had been dominated by four-time national champion BYU and Rocky Mountain rival Colorado, which ranked No. 2 nationally following the regular season, had a new team on top.
“It’s paid off,” Stout said of those early training sessions. “It got us to where we are, and I’m not going to complain.”
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When Holman took the job for former Utah lacrosse coach Rick Kladis a year ago, he didn’t shy away from talking about his goal to make Salt Lake City a destination for collegiate lacrosse.
But on the field, the former UNC goalkeeper coach was much more basic with his players. The Utes spent hours working on fundamentals of stick work and the correct shooting motion.
It may not be an NCAA-sanctioned sport, but the coaching staff — which includes three active Major League Lacrosse players in assistants Adam Ghitelman, Will Manny and Marcus Holman — demands commitment and respect from its players.
“I took them down to the bare bones, and then we built them back up little by little,” Holman said. “We’ve had success, but everything is relative. I’m used to winning; my staff is used to winning. You can develop a culture of winning … that’s on the field and off the field.”
Off the field, Holman demanded just as much. Remove your hat when you enter the building. Respect your elders: “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir.” Do your homework.
“For us, it’s a program and not one thing. I think some of that has resonated with a lot of these young men,” Holman said. “Ultimately, the credit goes to them. They had to build it and they had to execute it.”
The results were astounding; the Utes were 1-4 in RMLC play a year ago and won just two total games in 2015.
“We’ve just been building and building,” Swinney said. “We’ve got a lot of great kids and a lot of new talent.”
The Las Vegas native leads the team’s keepers in goal, averaging 10.7 saves and 8.857 goals-against per game. You may know of Swinney because of the goal he scored against Colorado several weeks ago.
But the first-team goalkeeper is quick to give credit to his teammates, too.
“There’s a lot of talent in front of me,” Swinney said. “We play our best defense when we talk and fly around and play with each other.
“As long as we’re together, that’s when we play great.”
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For as big of a turnaround as the Utes have put in during Holman’s first season, they know they still have a lot of work ahead.
Utah ended the regular season with back-to-back losses, a rare appearance by Texas at Ute Soccer Field and a road loss to rival BYU. Utah took the No. 1 seed into the division tournament last weekend and was upset by then-No. 6 BYU — the only team that has qualified for all 21 MCLA national tournaments.
“They’re the kings of the hill,” Holman said of BYU, “and we’re still trying to fight our way up the hill.”
But as they’ve done all year, Stout promised the Utes aren’t going to quit on the turnaround.
“It doesn’t matter the score," Stout said, "we’ll always give it our all.”
