NETANYA, Israel — As the co-captain and starting goalie for the U.S. national team, John Galloway was going to play a crucial role in this Federation of International Lacrosse Men’s World Championship regardless of what transpired Saturday against Australia.

But when backup goalie Jack Kelly tumbled to the Wingate Institute grass with a non-contact injury and came up hugging his left knee, Galloway’s importance to a U.S. team attempting to regain the gold medal became that much more magnified.

Seven minutes into the second quarter, Kelly leapt as he sent a clearing pass under pressure behind the goal. With the ball on the other side of the field, a trail official blew his whistle when he saw Kelly on the ground, where he lay for several minutes before being helped off the field by his teammates and medical staff.

For the rest of the game, Kelly sat under a green tent with a towel draped over his head and a large plastic bag full of ice wrapped around his knee, as teammates and support staff attempted to comfort him. He exited afterward on crutches.

“I thought he got slashed. You saw his arm, and he had red marks all over his elbow,” U.S. coach John Danowski said. “I didn’t realize that it was a lower body injury.”

Danowski did not speculate on the gravity of Kelly’s injury. But for the time being, the U.S. is down to one healthy goalie.

“Nobody knows,” Danowski said. “This is one of those things that you can’t overreact immediately. The doctors don’t even know the severity of it until he can relax, get back to the hotel and maybe tomorrow get reevaluated.”

FIL rules do not allow for injury replacements. Only the 23 players declared by teams at the beginning of the event can suit up during the world championship.

“To me, it’s a little bit of a fault in the system,” Danowski said. “In this day and age of health and being safety-conscious, it doesn’t really make a lot of good sense.”

Galloway, who shut out Australia in the first half, returned to the game and finished with seven saves in a 19-1 U.S. victory. Attackmen Ryan Brown, Marcus Holman and Jordan Wolf and midfielder Tom Schreiber scored three goals apiece. Midfielders Matt Danowski and Paul Rabil each finished with three assists. Twelve of Team USA’s 19 goals were assisted, continuing a trend that started in the tournament opener Thursday against the Iroquois.

But the players were not much up for celebrating — not with archrival and reigning gold medalist Canada looming Sunday (noon Eastern on ESPN2), and not with Kelly on crutches.

Following the post-game handshake, Galloway ran to Kelly, still sitting in a white folding chair with his head in his hands at the time, and put his arm around him.

“I just wanted to check in on him. He’s been unbelievable,” Galloway said. “We’ve been roommates for the training camp and for the games. To see him go down like that, how important he is for our team, it’s a big deal and it’s a big loss.”

Now the U.S. will lean even more on Galloway, whom teammates voted as one of the captains, along with Matt Danowski. After allowing three goals in the first seven minutes against the Iroquois, he has since given up just seven in the ensuing 139 minutes he has played. It has helped that Team USA has dominated possession behind faceoff man Trevor Baptiste (26-for-31 in two games) and has gotten stellar play from its rope unit, namely long-stick midfielder Michael Ehrhardt and short-stick defenders Jake Bernhardt, Will Haus and Kevin Unterstein.

“I had a little bit of jitters, but that’s not a good enough excuse at this level. You have to be ready to go,” said Galloway, who credited Kelly as well as assistant general manager Ben DeLuca for their encouragement. “A lot of guys, when they put on the jersey, they have a lot of pressure. That’s us included. Once we got that first quarter out of the books, we settled down, we dug back into who we are, and we’re starting to get comfortable together as a unit.”

Watch Galloway before games, and you’ll notice a peculiar routine. Wearing his tapered black sweatpants, he starts with a half-lap around the field, footwork drills and then a very specific shot sequence. Then he grips the crossbar with his gloved right hand and says a few words to himself before the opening whistle.

“I just take a minute or two in the goal and just kind of remind myself why we play, how fun this can be,” he said.

During the game, when Galloway is not barking coordinates on defense, he’ll keep the dialogue going with close defensemen Jesse Bernhardt, Joe Fletcher and Tucker Durkin. Being a college head coach at Jacksonville University has taught him how to dial down the yelling and have what he called “honest, authentic conversations” with the unit in front of him.

“With John, he is such a competitor. He’s a very soft-spoken, nice guy when off the field. When he gets on field, he is just so on all the time — very high-energy, with good urgency for the defensive guys,” Bernhardt said during an interview with US Lacrosse Magazine back in April. “A goalie, you’ve got to want to play for that guy and trust him, and it needs to be reciprocated.”

Coming out of timeouts or quarter breaks, Galloway will run to the middle of the field first before sprinting to the goal on a 90-degree turn — a reminder of something his high school coach, West Genesee legend Mike Messere, instilled in him as a young goalie growing up in Central New York.

“Coach Messere always taught me never to cut corners,” said Galloway, who went on to set an NCAA record for wins (59) as a two-time national champion at Syracuse.

Joel White, a long-stick midfielder for the U.S., was Galloway’s classmate and roommate at Syracuse. They’ve continued to room together as teammates with the Dallas Rattlers for their eight seasons in Major League Lacrosse.

“He leads on the field, but also leads by example. You don’t find many guys like that,” White said. “You turn that stuff into how unbelievable he is as a player and a person, and then he’s humble as well. It’s tough to find that triple threat.”

Galloway, a two-time MLL Goalie of the Year, has waited 10 years to put on a Team USA jersey. He narrowly missed out on the 2008 U19 team, for which White played on and won a gold medal. Both Galloway and White were on the 2014 senior training team, but both fell short of representing the U.S. in Denver. Galloway was an alternate.

“It’s been a tough couple years. After ’14, I was down in the dumps. But there are so many great players. I realized where I was, at that level, I wasn’t mature enough to handle it,” Galloway said. “At this point, I’m so excited to be a part of it. I’m so beyond the stats, I’m so beyond the individual stuff. At this point in my career, it’s all about finding a way to get it done and representing my country and this team the right way.”

“John is like a lot of these guys that might be at the tail end of their careers, and this is important to them,” said John Danowski, with whom Galloway spent one season as an assistant coach at Duke. “He’s in great shape. He’s an absolute student of the position, extremely detail-oriented, and it’s important to him.”

Galloway will have his hands full Sunday against a Canadian offense operating at a similar efficiency as that of the U.S. Jeff Teat, a budding superstar and rising junior at Cornell, doled out seven assists Sunday as Canada steamrolled Scotland 22-3.

Galloway will be dialed in as always. He’s not about to start cutting corners — especially not given his election as co-captain. His team needs the best version of him now more than ever.

“Honestly, it might be the most memorable lacrosse accolade I’ve ever gotten,” he said. “To be in a room with those 23 guys and to be voted captain, it was unexpected, and it’s certainly something that I don’t take lightly.”