Ricky Miezan Excited, Nervous to Make Pro Debut in Championship Series

Ricky Miezan was doing homework for his corporate finance class when Virginia head coach Lars Tiffany called. Miezan, who had completed his first year of lacrosse for the Cavaliers after five years as a linebacker for the Stanford football team, was waiting for an update regarding his appeal to the NCAA for an extra year of eligibility.

Tiffany had to deliver the disappointing news that his appeal was denied. His athletic life — going back to recreation lacrosse in Alexandria, through being a captain at Stanford, to a heartbreaking overtime loss in the NCAA Final Four the year prior — flashed before his eyes with the upsetting realization that it was all now in the past.

He called his parents, William and Julie. His mom was teary-eyed, but Miezan said they both had an inkling his athletic career wasn’t finished.

Two days later, Tiffany sent him an email. California Redwoods head coach Nat St. Laurent messaged Tiffany asking if Miezan was interested in joining the team for the Premier Lacrosse League Championship Series. It didn’t take long for Miezan to reply.

“Since I was a little kid, and I loved sports,” he said, “I always wanted to play professionally. This is a dream come true.”

Despite experiences like these, Miezan is nervous about the Championship Series.

“The nerves, for me, come from playing with guys like Rob Pannell, and I remember, I used to try and imitate Romar Dennis’s split dodge in high school,” he said. “Playing with guys you’ve always looked up to, you don’t want to disappoint them.”

One thing that he said will calm those nerves is getting to play in his backyard with his family and friends supporting him. The Championship Series takes place at The St. James in Springfield, Va. Miezan grew up in Alexandria, which is only about 10 minutes away. In addition to his parents, friends from home have messaged him to say they’ll be there. Extended family members are driving down. Even his neighbors said they would be there to cheer him on.

It also is helpful that, just like Miezan is looking forward to playing with his Redwoods teammates, they are looking forward to playing with him.

Nakeie Montgomery was in the same high school class as Miezan. The former USILA All-American at Duke remembers Miezan as the No. 1 recruit in the country. He was committed to play football and lacrosse for the Blue Devils’ top rival, North Carolina, before electing to go to Stanford.

While Montgomery and Miezan could have had incredible battles on the lacrosse field in college, Montgomery is excited about the prospect of getting to team with him in the Championship Series.

“I don’t believe many things are on accident,” he said. “He is where he is for a reason. He’s obviously got a fantastic work ethic. People love working with him. Sky’s the limit, man. We’re coming.”

Like Miezan, Montgomery also played Division I football, joining the Blue Devils football team in 2021. He appeared in nine games and participated in the program’s NFL Pro Day, where he ran a blistering 4.46 40-yard dash.

He’s been in the locker room with elite athletes, and Montgomery said there is plenty Miezan can take from his days playing football to his opportunity in the PLL.

“The experience being in different locker rooms, coast to coast,” he said, “that is going to be paramount to our success as far as our ability to be team players, our ability to be flexible, and our ability to make everyone around us better.”

The two Redwoods midfielders are the latest in a long line of players that have played both football and lacrosse at some of the highest levels. Jim Brown and Stan Cherry both played Division I lacrosse before their NFL careers, as did Jared Bernhardt, Tom Kennedy, Will Yeatman and Chas Gessner. Longtime Seahawks kicker Steven Hauschka played Division III lacrosse at Middlebury.

There’s also Tim Semisch and Chris Hogan. Not only did both play in the NFL; they both attempted to play in the PLL at the tail end of their football careers.

Semisch was on practice squads for the Miami Dolphins, Tennessee Titans and Denver Broncos. While in Denver, he recalled “seeing the writing on the wall” and felt his days in football were numbered. He also missed lacrosse. He kicked the tires on joining Major League Lacrosse, particularly the Denver Outlaws, but it didn’t work out. Through those efforts, however, he heard rumors about the PLL and connected with Paul Rabil. When the PLL officially launched and teams were assigned players, Semisch earned a spot on the Atlas during the inaugural training camp.

Neither had played in a competitive lacrosse game in nearly a decade prior to their stints in the PLL. To prepare for camp, both trained with current professional players: Semisch with fellow Nashville resident Joel White and Hogan with fellow Penn State alumni Drew Adams and Grant Ament.

When they arrived, though, they both recall feeling overwhelmed.

“My head was moving faster than I wanted to,” Semisch said. “Guys on that Atlas team … they moved the ball quick, they can shoot the ball hard and they knew how to move off ball and cut off ball and do a lot of stuff that, even when I was coaching a little bit, I hadn’t seen before.”

“I was in awe of how good some of these guys are,” said Hogan, who made the move from offensive midfielder in college to defensive midfielder in the PLL. “Trying to play defense against these guys and how fast they move the ball and how skilled they are, I mean, my head was spinning that first day.”

One of the things they both pointed out that surprised them most, however, was how helpful their teammates were. They spent time after practice working with them and getting them up to speed with the intricacies and schematics of pro lacrosse. Semisch remembered Tucker Durkin and Kyle Hartzell walking through things on the field and working on the whiteboard in the locker room after long, two-hour practices in the Florida sun.

Miezan won’t have a week of practices and scrimmages to get up to speed, but one advantage he has over Semisch and Hogan is the season he got to play at Virginia. He remembered feeling the same kind of rust Semisch and Hogan spoke of when he played in that first scrimmage — also at The St. James, against Navy — he forgot how fast the game was. He said playing for the Cavaliers helped him get some of the muscle memory back.

He also learned a lot being coached by Tiffany and playing alongside 2023 PLL draft picks Thomas McConvey and Xander Dickson, first-round National Lacrosse League pick Payton Cormier, and Connor Shellenberger, who is likely to be a top-three selection in the 2024 PLL Draft.

“Playing around them has allowed me to pick up things in my game that I didn’t have before,” he said. “The biggest thing was, in high school, I was more of a downhill dodger and feature guy, go-to-goal. Once you get to college, the defenses are much more organized, and the athletes are a little better, and you can’t just make everything happen by yourself.”

Miezan spent the summer playing and coaching elementary school clinics in Melbourne, Australia, for Altona Lacrosse Club alongside Cavaliers teammate Mitchell Whalen. Not only did he enjoy living in another country and the cooking of his hosts, the Kukucka family. He said that experience helped him remember who he was as a lacrosse player, playing for the love of the game in a free-flowing environment, while also trying things he wouldn’t have done in the pressure-cooker that is the NCAA.

\Those experiences fall perfectly in line with the advice Hogan would give Miezan as he prepares for the Championship Series.

“Get in as many reps as possible,” he said. “I’m sure he’s training just the way that he’s always been training his whole life. I’m sure he’s got a stick in his hands, but I think the live repetitions and any chance that you get to get on the fields and actually play lacrosse, you’ll get back into the moving, the dodging and playing defense.”

When Miezan talked to St. Laurent, the Redwoods coach talked about how they wanted to utilize his athleticism and his ability to play in transition, which is emphasized in the modified Olympic Sixes format of the Championship Series.

Semisch watched a few of Miezan’s games with Virginia, and while he acknowledged Miezan definitely has stick skills and lacrosse IQ, what stood out most was what he called a “pit bull mentality.”

“He’ll run into a ground ball 1000 miles an hour, he’ll play man-ball 1000 miles an hour, he’ll hit guys, he’ll ride guys, and that’s definitely going to be a big advantage,” he said. “He’s a big dude who can hit, who can move, and who can run, and then on top of that, he can carry the ball, and he can shoot, and he can move the ball well, too, so that’s going to create a lot of problems for some people because they’re not going to know how to guard him or how to attack him on the defensive side.”

The Redwoods hope they’ve assembled the perfect roster for a Championship Series victory. They have two-way players that thrive in transition like Montgomery, Ryan Tierney and Brian Tevlin. They have two-point threats like Dennis, Sergio Perkovic and Kevin Rogers. They have All-Stars like Jules Heningburg, Garrett Epple and Pannell.

With championship aspirations, Miezan will not get the opportunity to gradually work his way into the team; he will be thrown into the lion’s den immediately. He knows there will be nerves. But just like when he joined Virginia, he’s also ready to put in the work and learn from the best.

“I’m going to have to take it step-by-step,” he said. “I’m not walking into an environment I know. This is completely unknown to me. The biggest thing with an exciting tournament like this with really good players is you just want to pick up as much as you can. You want to learn from all of them, and that’s what I’m really looking to do.”