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little less than four years ago, not far from where he grew up on Long Island, a dejected Tom Schreiber walked off the field at Bethpage High School. He tossed off his No. 22 white, black and orange jersey and the rest of his Princeton equipment for the final time after a late April loss to Cornell in a neutral-site game.

It was done. A college lacrosse career that brought Schreiber much individual acclaim but did not live up to his or others’ expectations had ended.

“The number one thing I was looking for was to win a national championship, and I didn’t come close,” said Schreiber, a two-time Tewaaraton finalist who finished as Princeton’s No. 5 all-time scorer. “It kind of burned and it still does. That’s in part what keeps me going and what drives me so hard.”

From 2010-14, the Tigers appeared in just one NCAA tournament game, losing to Virginia 6-5 in 2012. It’s what fuels Schreiber to pursue lacrosse almost exclusively full-time when he could be doing something else with his Princeton degree. And it might just be the underlying motivation for one of the best calendar years a pro player could ever piece together.

PHOTO BY JOHN STROHSACKER

At age 25 and in his prime, Schreiber won a second straight Major League Lacrosse MVP award this summer, only after earlier in the year trying his hand at the indoor game and winning the National Lacrosse League Rookie of the Year nod. And for the first time since high school, he experienced the joy of hoisting a championship trophy — with MLL’s Ohio Machine. That 17-12 win over the Denver Outlaws in Dallas was cathartic. In the even bigger picture, it served as a symbolic moment of the humble Long Islander’s (yes, they exist) coronation. 

The 2014 MLL No. 1 overall draft pick with the complete package of skills — vision, smarts, quick first step, ambidextrous passing and dodging ability down both alleys, and determination wrapped into a fast, athletic 6-foot-1, 200-pound frame — now had the prettiest of lacrosse resumes to match.

“For me, and I think for a lot of other people,” says Machine teammate and midfielder Peter Baum, himself an MVP candidate a year ago, “Tom’s the best player in the world right now.”

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e had a stick in his crib with his name on it.

Doug Schreiber, Tom’s dad and a National Lacrosse Hall of Fame midfielder — like his son, one part goal-scorer and one part feeder during his playing days — confesses to it.

“He picked up the game early,” he says. “The second he got home, he definitely did have a stick.”

And so it began. 

By the time he was 6 years old, little Tom was tossing a ball — lefty and righty — against a board in the family’s basement. By third grade, he was on East Meadow’s Nassau County PAL team, his first organized lacrosse team, coached by dad, and he began to define his game.

“Everybody that’s ever seen him play has talked about his versatility and vision,” says Doug Schreiber, who coached Tom in youth ball and in high school, where he’s the offensive coordinator at Catholic league power St. Anthony’s (N.Y.). “He picks up open guys and he snap feeds. He can really push the ball through a crowd and get it to where it has to be. And he’s always been very humble, a hard worker, and a team player. Sometimes you had to say, ‘Listen, don’t throw to Billy because he can’t catch, and we only have two minutes to go. But don’t tell Billy.’”

Schreiber, whose younger sister Chrissy played at Rutgers, tagged along to watch his older cousins play or see his father referee games across Long Island, and occasionally he caught a game involving Maryland, too. That’s where pops won an NCAA title in 1973 before embarking on a 50-day world tour — to California, Hawaii, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand, New Delhi and England — with Team USA in 1974. 

“It gave him a chance to see the world,” Tom Schreiber says. “The same thing as me, potentially.” 

Four years ago at the Federation of International Lacrosse World Championship in Denver, Schreiber served as a volunteer assistant coach for the Uganda national team, the first of its kind from Africa, and watched as the U.S. took silver to Canada’s gold. If all works out as planned this year, he will do in Israel this July what his dad’s U.S. team did — win a world title — and be a central fixture in a golden story. Then maybe he’ll do it again in 2019 with the U.S. indoor team.

“Anytime you’re wearing USA on your chest and playing with a group like that on the world stage has got to be pretty incredible,” he says.

US Lacrosse Magazine met Tom Schreiber at his residence in Long Beach, N.Y., joined his father, Doug, at his childhood home in East Meadow, N.Y., and took to the field at the Mineola PAL complex for some shooting. Photos by Brian Schneider.

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he phone call surprised him. Schreiber was traveling back from Princeton’s alumni game last fall to his apartment on Long Beach on the South Shore of Long Island when he listened to the voicemail from Josh Sanderson, who had recently retired from the NLL and moved to the front office as Toronto’s assistant general manager. 

Sanderson wanted to see if Schreiber had any interest in trying out for the Rock.

“I don’t know,” Schreiber said when he called back. “I don’t have any.”

But after a few days and recruiting calls from Hall of Famer Casey Powell, who played with Sanderson for the now-defunct Boston Blazers, and Rock defender Brodie Merrill, “I decided, ‘Why not?’” Schreiber says. “It was the first time, maybe ever, that there were no real expectations for me.”

Toronto forwards Colin Doyle and Sanderson had retired and Rob Hellyer, the team’s best returning offensive player, tore his ACL. With what it evaluated as a thin draft class, the Rock front office sought an unorthodox approach to fill a need. 

Schreiber, along with fellow Americans Kieran McArdle and Connor Buczek — two of Powell’s former teammates with MLL’s Florida Launch — were the ingredients of the so-called “American experiment.”

Schreiber wore an outdoor helmet to his first Rock training camp last November and played with V-stringing patterns in his stick. 

“I just had zero instincts at all,” he says, “but I tried to get better every time out.”

The smaller goals, bigger goalies, speed of the game and tight quarters took some getting used to, but by early February, Schreiber put the NLL on notice that he’d adjusted just fine. The rookie forward dropped 10 points in an 18-10 win against Buffalo — complete with a spectacular crease-diving goal — while squaring off against Billy Dee Smith, one of the league’s most punishing defenders. Embracing the NLL’s physicality might have been the easiest transition.

Schreiber played contact football starting at age 5, was a three-sport athlete, and dabbled in baseball and soccer, too, until eighth grade when he began to focus on lacrosse and football. At St. Anthony’s, he was an All-Long Island option quarterback, and won championships in both football and lacrosse as a senior.

In his first year in box, Schreiber burned up the left side of green carpets, with right-handed magic and surgical shooting accuracy. He set the NLL rookie record for assists (61) and posted a team-high 94 points, seventh highest in the league. In Rock owner, president and general manager Jamie Dawick’s opinion, Schreiber was “legitimately an MVP candidate in his first year ever playing the game. If you took Tom Schreiber off my team last year, and this is no disrespect to his teammates, we would have been in trouble. It got to the point where we were asking Tom to do what he could because we were struggling.”

Schreiber and his American teammates spent every Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning traveling to and from Toronto for practice, with Schreiber returning usually via a 6 a.m. flight. That gave him time to teach a youth clinic on Long Island that night, or catch up on his non-lacrosse, part-time work: helping former Princeton teammate Luke Armour as an analyst with Chaac Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in California, where Schreiber spent some time living after college. 

Now Schreiber sometimes takes meetings in New York City for the firm. But for the most part, he lives the lacrosse life, spending roughly 40 weekends per year on the road for indoor and outdoor games. He’s already an NLL travel veteran. “Customs doesn’t like you going through with your cell phone out,” he says at the start of a very slightly delayed interview while traveling to Toronto in November for his second training camp.

PHOTO BY NLL PHOTOS

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uring home game weekends in Ohio, many of the Machine players gather in a coffee shop near the hotel where they stay in downtown Columbus. It’s called Red Velvet, and it’s where personality comes to life as much as the aromas of dark roasted beans. There are plenty of jokes, often directed Schreiber’s way.

“You can’t take a good picture,” Kyle Harrison may say as he tries to make a shareable GoPro photo and Schreiber’s terse smile spoils the frame.

“Your jeans… what is it with those?” West Coaster Baum laments at the Long Islander’s lack of skinny jeans usage.

“Hey lawyer,” Schreiber might sarcastically retort to Baum, who’s in his first year of law school “Stop checking your hair in your phone.”

“We have a good vibe as a team and Tom is a big part of that,” Baum says. “I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to not be on an MLL team with him. It’s so much fun. That’s because of the player he is on the field and the player he is off. He’s one of the most genuine, honest, good-natured people I know.”

In his first game back with Ohio this year — the fifth week of the season, thanks to the bemoaned overlap between NLL and MLL campaigns and the fact that the Rock had advanced to the NLL East Division finals — Schreiber, a co-captain, took over for Baum as the primary initiator in the Machine midfield and had a goal and five assists. He finished with 18 goals and 26 assists in 10 games and was one of four Ohio players to finish in the top 13 in points. Baum tied for the league lead with 52 and attackmen Marcus Holman and Mark Cockerton notched 49 and 47, respectively.

“Tom has the ability to play with anybody because of his ability to share the ball,” says Holman, also Schreiber’s teammate with the U.S. and an assistant coach at Utah’s new Division I program. “I’m not sure my career would be where it would be without three years of Tom Schreiber. Guys see that, and want to play with him, and want to run on the same midfield line as him.”

In the last two seasons, Schreiber has dished a league-best 64 helpers. (Only two other players, Rob Pannell and Ned Crotty, have more than 50, and they are both attackmen.) According to MoneyballLacrosse.com’s Joe Keegan, Schreiber is the only player to shoot 25 percent unassisted, 30 percent assisted and post a 0.8 assist-to-turnover ratio in each of the last two MLL seasons.

“He has incredible timing with his dodges, shoots on the run without breaking stride with both hands, and passes like an elite attackman,” says ESPN lacrosse analyst Paul Carcaterra. “And now that he’s playing pro indoor lacrosse, his stick skills and ability to operate in tight quarters is becoming another added dimension to an already insane skill set. He’s the best player in the world right now, case closed.”

Word trickled out over social media about Schreiber’s second straight MVP award as the Machine ended practice the day before the title game at The Star in Frisco, the Dallas Cowboys’ team headquarters.

“Sorry,” he told Baum, sheepishly apologizing for winning what he thought should have gone to his teammate, who played in all of Ohio’s 16 games.

“Tom’s humility is becoming a well-known trait of his in the lacrosse community,” Holman says. “He’s the first guy to deflect praise and give props to his teammates. I’m not sure you can find that everywhere with people that are at the top of their game.”

You won’t catch any parts of the Machine using the nickname, but “Captain America” is what the Rock call Schreiber. It’s part marketing message — and Toronto just might unveil special edition Marvel jerseys with the red, white and blue character on the front and Schreiber’s pro jersey number 26 (the digits his dad wore) on the back for a charity game this season — and part reflection of Schreiber’s reputation.

“Be as good as I can be as a player and win as much as possible. That’s always been the mindset,” he says. “That hunger and that drive hasn’t wavered at all. Getting the taste of a championship for the first time in a long time — not that I needed any reigniting, because I’ve been pretty obsessed with it for a long time — it just makes you more motivated to go get some more. Whether that’s building something really special with the Machine or being a part of a championship season in Toronto or winning on the world stage, that’s really what it’s all about. That’s when I’m happiest and most satisfied. That’s what I’m chasing.”

It’s hard to tell if the race will ever stop.

The Lacrosse Life

Outside of part-time work as a venture capital analyst, Tom Schreiber focuses exclusively on his lacrosse career, spending roughly 40 weekends a year on the road. How does he manage Monday-Friday? Really, it starts Sunday.

“It’s important to note there is some lacrosse work — shooting, dodging, wall ball — every day,” he says. “Throughout the week, I’ll mix in medicine ball work, some cardio — rowing, bike, jump rope, sprints — depending on how I’m feeling from the game before.”

Sunday: Recovery (bike, ice, stretching)
Monday: Lift and stick work
Tuesday: Footwork (ladders, hurdles, cone drills) and stick work
Wednesday: Lift and stick work
Thursday: Light lift (upper body only) and stick work
Friday: Travel
Saturday: Game day

Schreiber occasionally revisits his PAL roots, practicing stick work at a facility in Mineola, N.Y. He has no ironclad routing, but sticks to three principles:

1. Dodge from all angles — wing, top and behind.

2. Shoot with both hands on the run and with time and room.

3. Make sure everything is realistic and full speed.

Americans on NLL Rosters

Expansion may help. But for now, U.S.-born players continue to struggle to crack NLL rosters.

Twenty-nine Americans reported to NLL training camps in November. By the end of the month, only nine remained among the 180 players named to active rosters.