Greg Ritts doesn’t often have time to think about the significance of playing with his son, Cole, while he’s on the lacrosse field. He’s got a job to do, and that’s to defend the opposing attackmen.

But there he stood, gazing at his son who was checking an opponent and fighting for the ground ball. Greg and Cole Ritts were playing in the German Lacrosse Association Master League, matching up against Saarbrucken in March. It was the first time Cole, a former attackman, was playing long pole.

Greg watched proudly as the situation developed across the field.

“He just basically enveloped this smaller attackman,” Greg Ritts said. “I was on the other side of the field and the guy could not get the ball away. Cole just looked like a bear with a honeypot. He sort of hunched over this guy, checking the daylights out of him. That’s the one time that I was really conscious of the father-son dynamic out there.”

As for the 6-foot, 3-inch Cole, he’s already accustomed to seeing his 5-foot-9 father around.

“When we get on the field, we’re more teammates than we are father and son,” Cole said. “I’ve just become used to it now. It’s a pretty normal thing to look up and see my dad in the huddle with me.”

Father and son, the Ritts line up on the same defensive line when they play lacrosse. It’s a sport that Greg Ritts started playing in Ohio as a child, Cole Ritts picked up in the Seattle suburbs, then the duo continued with games of catch in Paris and settled with a new-found love for the sport in the small European country of Luxembourg. 

Not only are Greg and Cole Ritts playing for fun, but each has joined a new mission in Luxembourg — playing with the national team in this month’s FIL World Championship in Netanya, Israel.

Yes, the 49-year-old Greg Ritts and son Cole Ritts, 17, an incoming senior in high school, are headed for Israel to play lacrosse on the international stage. A sequence of job opportunities brought the Ritts to Luxembourg, a country with less than 40 lacrosse players but one that could make this opportunity possible.

“When I was Cole’s age, there was no way my dad was going to be out there doing these things,” Greg said. “It’s great to be able to spend that time with him and hang with him and not be a burden to him. There wouldn't be an opportunity anywhere else in the world that I could, even setting aside the world championships, just be able to play with him.”

And Cole, who's reached an age when children often shy away from parents, thinks the chance to play with his father is only going to make him a better lacrosse player.

“It’s great because he has a lot of experience on defense," Cole said of his father. "He knows how the slides work much better than I do, so here’s always there to tell me what I did wrong and what I can do better. It’s more of a positive than a negative, being able to have it help me out.”

Neither could have foreseen playing lacrosse in Israel just years ago. Greg encouraged his son to try lacrosse near his home in Mercer Island, Wash. back in 2010. Cole tried the game out, but never connected with it.

His tall frame had not helped him in a sport where players thrived on agility. His love for the game wasn’t very high when his father, a lawyer for Publicis Groupe, got an offer to transfer to the global offices in Paris. 

Off to France the Ritts family went, where Cole and Greg seldom played lacrosse — save for a few games of catch. Lacrosse was an afterthought when Greg left for another job in neighboring Luxembourg in late 2014. 

It took a few years for Cole and Greg Ritts to connect with the sport again. Cole found signs attached to light posts emblazoned with “Join Luxembourg Lacrosse” and he started thinking about the game he used to play.

“One day I watched ‘Crooked Arrows’ and then it got me wanting to play lacrosse again,” Cole said. “I looked the club up on Facebook and found out that they had semi-regular practices. They’d have as much of a practice as they could with that many people. We contacted them and they said they were looking for players to join.”

And just like that, Cole was in. He had to balance lacrosse with baseball and hockey, but he was enjoying the game more than he ever had.

The Ritts came to a Luxembourg Lacrosse practice in late 2016 with little expectations. They arrived to see 20 or so players doing line drills, line drills and more line drills. It was as basic a lacrosse practice as one can find, but one necessary for a team working on fundamentals like stick handling.

“We did line drills for about a half an hour,” Cole said. “We kept doing that over and over and over again because the goal that we were using was made out of PVC pipe and fishing nets. It was smaller than a box lacrosse goal. It was a lot of passing, right-handed and left-handed skills.”

The Luxembourg Lacrosse was impressed by the Ritts’ skills, so much so that club president Pit Bingen invited Greg to help with coaching the team. But he wasn’t done playing just yet.

“From there, it was a lot of guys that were brand new to the sport,” Greg said. “We started developing them and then that following summer, we had some of the guys back from university who had played elsewhere. That started to develop the critical mass.”

The players returning from university — many of which got experience in Germany — helped the quality of practices. But most of the dozens of players came to have fun, a change of pace from Cole’s other practices.

“It’s not win at all costs, squeezing the fun out of the game,” Greg said. “There’s a little more perspective.”

By late 2017, Luxembourg Lacrosse made it a goal to compete in the 2018 FIL World Championship in Netanya, Israel. There were barely 30 players within the country roughly the size of Rhode Island, so Cole and Greg Ritts knew they’d be counted on.

Cole decided to drop baseball and hockey and focus solely on lacrosse — a sport with which he fell back in love. 

“Coming back to it now, it’s a lot more fun and intense and I enjoy it more,” Cole said. “Getting to play for Luxembourg in the world championship has become a source of motivation. I don't want to let these guys down.”

And Cole has stayed true to his word. He switched from attack to defense to help fill holes on the roster. He and his father have driven to practice 3-4 times a week for the past 10 months, preparing for the biggest moment in their sporting lives.

Greg drives home from work, grabs his son and changes for practice, and heads to the field — one of two fields on either side of the city. It’s a chance for the father and son to catch up before they become teammates again.

“I would not have this level of interaction with Cole [without lacrosse],” Greg said. “Three days or four days a week, we get that time where we’re driving to and from practice and on the field. … It was a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing and the fact that we were in a country where it was a relatively new sport, it was an opportunity not just for Cole but potentially for me.”

The Ritts duo will help kick off the FIL World Championship on July 11, when Luxembourg faces Hong Kong in the first game of the competition. Whatever happens in the nine-day tournament, this won’t be the end for either in lacrosse.

Cole plans on playing club lacrosse in college, after pairing with his father in the Belgian League this year. Greg, at 49, is not done playing the sport he’s loved for decades. 

For now, lacrosse is the sport that has helped a father become closer to his son, no matter the result.