The flight from New York to San Antonio lasted approximately four hours — plenty of time for the Kavanagh brothers to talk about their expectations for Spring Premiere.
Matt Kavanagh, the middle of five brothers, and Pat Kavanagh, the second youngest, sat next to each other. Matt was headed to Texas to join the U.S. men’s senior team, while his brother traveled as part of the U.S. U19 training team.
“I asked him how he felt, how he feels playing for the USA, what he was comfortable with,” Matt Kavanagh said. “I’m going through the same process with the men’s team, so I tried to get him in the headspace going into the weekend.”
Matt Kavanagh certainly has experience from which to draw, having competed with the U19 team in Turku, Finland in 2012 — a tournament in which he won Most Valuable Player.
Now eight years later, it’s his little brother’s turn to represent his country.
Matt and Pat Kavanagh competed at the same event for the first time, and it was with Team USA. With almost a decade separating the two brothers, neither anticipated the opportunity, yet they found it in San Antonio from Jan. 4-5.
“It’s something that we both dreamed about, wearing the red, white and blue,” Pat Kavanagh said. “To do it with my older brother, who I’ve been looking up to my whole life, it’s surreal.”
“It’s kind of making me feel old a little bit,” Matt Kavanagh joked. “It’s really seeing this come full circle with him going through the process.”
Lacrosse has carried through the Kavanagh family, which features the five brothers — Kevin, Brendan, Matt, Pat and Chris — and sister Colleen. For the Kavanagh brothers, the backyard was an outlet for them to explore a number of sports.
They played basketball, street hockey and, of course, lacrosse growing up in Rockville Centre, N.Y. And the youngest brothers, Pat and Chris, often found themselves in the goal. But they picked up on their brothers' skill and competitiveness.
“It would get pretty physical, and Chris and I were always the smallest ones there, but we were so interested in playing with them,” Pat Kavanagh said. “It made me and my little brother better.”
Eventually, Matt Kavanagh worked his way onto the U.S. U19 team, which traveled to Finland in 2012. At home in New York, then 12-year-old Pat Kavanagh watched the games online, cheering his brother on the entire tournament.
All the while, their father, Kevin, had the younger Kavanagh on his mind. During the 2012 tournament, he calculated the age cutoff date for the 2020 team, which landed on Pat’s birthday — Sept. 1, 2000.
When Matt Kavanagh made it to Notre Dame, the Kavanaghs often threw Chris and Pat in the car (or plane) to make the trip to South Bend. There, Matt waited after games and practices to shoot with his brothers.
“A lot of the times I’d be like, ‘Ugh, I don’t want to go out there. I want to go eat,’” Matt Kavanagh said. “But it was an extra 30 minutes or an hour, and it was something they’d really look forward to on the drive out.”
Pat and Chris Kavanagh continued to travel to watch Matt and Brendan play in professional lacrosse — Matt Kavanagh competes for the PLL’s Redwoods and Brendan Kavanagh for MLL’s Denver Outlaws — even as each made their names known at Chaminade (N.Y.). Last year, Pat Kavanagh received an invitation to try out for the U19 team.
Four events in, he has made an impression on U.S. coach Nick Myers.
“Kavanagh is a guy that has a real spark to his game,” Myers said. “His brother was certainly very charismatic with the way he played. He brought a ton of energy to the field. His brother definitely has some similar characteristics.”
From their dodging to their stick skills and riding ability, Matt and Pat Kavanagh share plenty of similarities. That was on display at Spring Premiere. Each U.S. team played two games during the weekend.
With Pat Kavanagh watching on, Matt Kavanagh provided one of the highlights of the tournaments, spinning at X and losing his defender before scoring against Japan.
“When he scored that goal, all the guys were getting on me,” Pat Kavanagh said. “‘You gotta put in the work against Japan tomorrow.’”
And he did. Little Kav dropped three goals in a 14-2 win over Japan the next day.
Soon after, the Kavanaghs returned to San Antonio International Airport, ready to fly back to New York. They sat together and watched the Minnesota Vikings take on the New Orleans Saints in the NFL playoffs.
They talked about the success of Spring Premiere, and the dynamics of each team.
“It was just like us sitting around the house having a normal conversation,” Pat Kavanagh said.
The brothers landed at LaGuardia Airport, dropped their things at Matt’s place in Brooklyn and headed straight to Joe’s Pizza. Together, they enjoyed what Pat called “probably the best slice I’ve had.”