BY DARREN SANDS
An athlete stood next to his college coach three days after playing the state championship game. He has already begun, he tells him, to work out for the next season, for his freshman year. For fall ball. In June.
Sounds like something an athlete telling a college coach something he would want to hear, a plea for playing time. But coming from the kid standing on the sideline, talking to Harvard coach John Tillman, it sounds like the truth.
What else might you expect from Jeff Cohen, this year’s Newsday 2008 Nassau County Boys Lacrosse Player of the Year?
“To me that sent a very strong message,” said Harvard coach John Tillman, “about how important lacrosse is to him and how committed and driven he is to being successful at the next level.”
Cohen made his mark at Syosset, with 260 career goals becoming the all-time goal-scorer in Long Island history and, as Cohen went, so went the Braves. One need look no further than Syosset’s first game against Garden City for the source of Cohen’s motivation.
"I posted that story on my wall," he said earlier this spring, referring to a game which conspicuously noted that he did not score.
Tillman, meanwhile was in town at the Nassau Empire tryouts at Syosset, which is when he got to visit with Cohen. "I told him, 'I’m going to challenge you.,'" Tillman said. "He knows he has to earn his spot, and I think he’s excited about that.
"What he's done should give him some confidence. Now he's gotta go out and prove it again."
Newsday spoke with Tillman about his visits to Long Island, and the buzz around here surrounding what many will believe his program's meteoric rise to the the apex of Division I lacrosse in the next few years.
He mentioned that landing Cohen and players like Garden City product Dean Gibbons are paramount to their success, but that the growing popularity of the sport in Eastern Massachusetts along with the Final Four coming to Foxborough's Gillette Stadium, put Harvard in a prime position -- especially as the area's only Division I Men's lacrosse program.
"We've proven we can recruit the top students who are also good lacrosse players, and I think kids realize that there is a lot to the Harvard experience."