This article appears in the January edition of US Lacrosse Magazine, available exclusively to US Lacrosse members. Join or renew today! Thank you for your support.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the alarm clock rings at 6 a.m. in Ross Dickerson’s off-campus apartment. He gets dressed, makes a cup of coffee and walks across West Kennedy Boulevard to Punch Boxing, a fitness studio focusing on boxing classes. There, he meets people from all walks of life — fellow college students and those in the working world — and gets started with a dynamic warm-up equipped with running and light punches on a bag.

Eventually, Dickerson and his 7 a.m. class are performing combos on the bag at the order of his favorite instructor, Johnny. Over the course of an hour, he’ll complete a circuit featuring several combos sandwiched between pushups, burpees and ladder work.

Then Dickerson reports for 8:30 a.m. weight training with the Tampa men’s lacrosse team. He has repeated this routine for months, trimming 10 pounds since last season.

“It’s been amazing purely from a fitness standpoint,” he said. “I haven’t been the quickest kid on the team over the past couple years. When we do the two-mile test, I’ve never been one to finish in that top tier. This year, I’ve consistently been there.”

Dickerson is the top faceoff specialist in Division II and the US Lacrosse Magazine Preseason Player of the Year. After winning plenty of faceoffs in high school using a standing, overhand motorcycle grip, he started taking a knee to acclimate to college. After three-plus dominant seasons — 781 faceoff wins out of 1,026 attempts, a 76.1-percent win rate that ranks just above Yale’s TD Ierlan for the NCAA record across all three divisions — Dickerson will have to adapt to the new rules forbidding knee-down faceoffs and the motorcycle grip.

The standing, neutral-grip approach has been the talk of the faceoff community. Dickerson wanted to become quicker with his hands and much more agile. As he searched for answers, he found Punch Boxing.

Although it’s not the only routine that has helped Dickerson improve his new approach, it has caught the attention of his team.

“I looked at the kid the other day and I said, ‘You have to do a skin fold test on him,’” said Tampa coach Rory Whipple, who mentioned Richie Moran as the only other player he could recall using a punching bag to help his lacrosse skillset. “There can’t be more than 4- or 5-percent body fat on you.’ Now, he knows how to box, too.”

Despite the NCAA’s effort to reduce the disproportionate effect dominant faceoff men can have on the outcome of a game, Dickerson, who had an 81.4-percent mark through eight games last year, has no plans of slowing down. “I’m not planning to lose more faceoffs than last year just because they changed the rules,” he said.

Dickerson was a gymnast for 10 years before finding lacrosse in eighth grade. The discipline and instant feedback he gained from gymnastics translated well to the faceoff position. He traveled throughout the East Coast looking to get on the radar of college coaches but initially had little luck. Eventually, he caught the eye of several Division II schools, including Tampa. Whipple loved what he saw in Dickerson and offered the Berlin, Md., native a chance to compete for a Division II title contender.

With a long line of pilots in his family, Dickerson had been looking in Florida for schools that could allow him to pursue his passion for aviation in addition to lacrosse. He considered Embry-Riddle and Florida Tech, but the opportunity to play at Tampa was too good to pass up.

Sam Watts was the primary faceoff man for the Spartans during Dickerson’s freshman season. He watched Watts succeed with the knee-down approach and soon changed his own mechanics.

“I guess I have to try and fight fire with fire,” Dickerson said.  

For the next three-and-a-half years, the adjustments made Dickerson the preeminent faceoff specialist in the country. He took the starting spot as a sophomore and won 75 percent (267-for-354). He followed that with a 76-percent mark (392-for-518) as a junior. He worked on mechanics with former Limestone great Kevin Reisman, who had a two-year stint as an assistant coach at Tampa.

Dickerson was on pace for an even better season when the COVID-19 pandemic halted the 2020 campaign. Faced with the same decision as many seniors last spring, Dickerson didn’t have to spend much time pondering whether to return to campus and use the extra year of NCAA eligibility.

Dickerson wants to be part of a championship team at Tampa. His coach knows he could play a major role in making that happen.

“What would it take to get you back here?” Whipple said he asked Dickerson. “We spoke after the last game on finished business. He brings a work ethic that the other kids look up to him, and you know he wants to try to pursue a national championship.”

He knew this offseason would be different on multiple fronts — most importantly as it pertains to learning a new faceoff style. He won’t let that be an excuse for anything less than what he has already produced in his career.

“It’s definitely a little different,” he said. “But at the same time, the guys that want to win the most are still going to win faceoffs.”