Jimmeh Koita’s timing was perfect. 
 
Late in the fourth quarter of the CAA championship game against Hofstra, the fifth-year senior fired on the whistle. In fractions of a second, he pinched and popped the ball straight to himself to secure possession. In doing so, Koita also sealed the Dragons’ first conference tournament title and NCAA tournament bid since 2014. 
 
Drexel’s career leader in faceoff wins had yet to pick up a lacrosse stick at that time. A South Bronx native and the son of immigrants from Guinea in West Africa, Koita never even heard of the sport until January of his junior year at Cardinal Hayes High School.
 
“There are not a lot of kids playing college lacrosse that have his kind of story,” Drexel coach Brian Voelker said. 
 
The latest chapter of the story that’s equal parts perseverance and opportunity for the two-time captain who shirks attention but whose 1,000-watt smile lights up any room he walks into will be on full display Saturday in Drexel’s first-round matchup against sixth-seeded Notre Dame in Denver. Arguably the hottest team in the country, the Dragons (10-2) enter the NCAA tournament on a nine-game winning streak after losing two of its first three contests. 

It’s easy to pinpoint redshirt freshman Sean Donnelly’s emergence into a quarterbacking role, Reid Bowering’s return to form and Drexel’s 11th-ranked scoring offense with impressive depth as factors fueling the Dragons’ recent dominance.

But the run has also coincided with Koita finding his footing again at the stripe after the NCAA rule change last summer that eliminated the knee-down motorcycle grip.  
 
Koita started 2021 with a 3-for-12 performance in a 12-10 victory against Towson, then was replaced after starting 1-for-5 in Drexel’s next game — a 19-12 loss to Delaware. 
 
Koita apologized to his teammates after the Delaware game, then returned that afternoon to Vidas Field and stayed out there for three hours. He started taking reps to YouTube videos of various whistle cadences, but soon ditched the whistles for music. 

Koita said he excelled the most in the past (54.6 win percentage in 2018 and 57 percent in 2019) when it felt as if everything was in the right place to move as fast as possible. He worked to find that feeling again. He made a couple tweaks to his positioning and felt faster the next day at practice. He started taking extra reps in the morning before team lifts and at night after he finished studying. 

He noted the field stays open until 10 p.m.
 
“The biggest difference was just putting in those extra hours,” Koita said. “I had to remember that hard work was what got me here. Hard work was what was going to help me do this thing again the right way.” 

It’s a mentality Koita first gleaned from parents. His mother, Mariama, works in hotel housekeeping. His father, Koutoubou, drives a taxi. 

“Seeing them wake up every single day in the morning and going to work and doing everything that they can to help their kids get a foot ahead in life taught us a lot,” said Koita, the oldest of three siblings.

Koita went 7-for-12 in a loss to UMass on March 20. The Dragons haven’t lost a game since then, and Koita has improved to 51 percent on the season. 

“After that second or third week, he just looked more determined and more focused on his game,” Voelker said. “You could literally see the transformation on his face and in his body language.”  

The process and improvement reminded Koita of when he first started facing off in the summer of 2015. He earned second-team all-conference honors playing defensive midfield his junior year at Cardinal Hayes and helped the team to an 8-8 record and its first CHSAA B-Division championship appearance. He wasn’t satisfied. He saw the disappointment on the faces of the seniors and resolved not to let it happen again. 

“I wanted to come back the next year and finish the job for the boys,” Koita said. “That’s kind of where the journey started.”

The team’s starting faceoff man graduated, so Koita started watching Greg Gurenlian tutorials on YouTube that summer. He emailed Gurenlian inquiring about the Faceoff Academy’s “Draw Days” every Wednesday night at Field #72 on the south end of Randall's Island. Koita said he was the worst player at the first session he attended.  

Koita’s improvement was visible by the next week, after countless hours of reps at the West Bronx Recreation Center. Each live rep offered feedback. It made him only want to get better.

“He’s like the billboard of what you can achieve in any sport or just life if you're willing to listen and stay humble about how much you know and how much you want to know,” said Gurenlian, who described Koita as relentless. “If you do that, you can achieve things that seem completely out of your realm of possibility at the moment.”

At one of the Draw Days that summer, Koita met Joe Fowler, an All-American defenseman at Hofstra in the 1980s who has spent the last 20 years coaching youth lacrosse in New York’s inner-city neighborhoods. Fowler was wowed by Koita’s athleticism, but even more so by his determination. He asked Koita if he wanted to try out for the New York City Empire State Cup team and told him how lacrosse gave him the opportunity to go to college at Hofstra. Fowler said he’d do everything he could to help Koita get the same chance. 

“He had that belief and faith in me,” Koita said of Fowler. “That’s why to this day he’s like a second father to me.”

 

Fowler started driving Koita to the FOA training sessions every Wednesday, then to summer tournaments and college prospect days. Fowler still has a picture of Koita after Drexel's prospect showcase, at which Voelker said it felt like Koita did not lose a single rep. In the image, Koita dons a Dragons jersey for the first time. His smile extends almost from ear to ear.

“Coach, I can do this,” Koita told Fowler that day. “I can do this.”

That December, Koita broke onto the scene when he made the final four of the FOA National Showcase. The ensuing spring, he won 81 percent of his faceoffs and was named team MVP for Cardinal Hayes, which went 14-3 and prevailed in the championship game. 

“Jim being the type of guy that he is, he will thank all of his coaches, he will thank his family, he will thank his teammates, he'll thank everyone who gave him the opportunity,” said Tim Heckman, the co-director of the Harlem Jets Lacrosse Program who was the defensive coordinator of Koita’s teams at Cardinal Hayes. “But the reality is he saw the opportunity and he took it and used this sport to open up all these doors. … It’s such an important piece of the puzzle for boys and girls of color that are getting into lacrosse to see young men and young women that look like them that have used the sport to their advantage.”

Heckman traveled to Philadelphia with the entire Cardinal Hayes team to watch Koita play against Saint Joseph’s his freshman year. The reunion was a bright spot in a season in which Koita won only 38.8 percent of his faceoffs. 

Voelker could see that spring that the lack of statistical success weighed on Koita. He pulled the freshman aside one day after practice and told him not to let what he does on the field define who he is. “We know you’re working hard and you’re going to get there,” Voelker told Koita. “But there’s a lot more that you can take out of this thing than just winning some lacrosse games.”

Koita improved by more than 15 percent the next spring.  Before he returned to Philadelphia in August 2018 for his junior year, he made the several-hour trip via public transportation from the Bronx to the Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Westhampton Beach, N.Y. He arrived at around 10 p.m. bearing a pink hat and Drexel helmet signed by all his teammates for Fowler’s wife, Sarah de Havenon-Fowler, who was battling brain cancer. 

At that point, her condition had largely eliminated her ability to speak. Fowler remembers his wife’s words as if she spoke them yesterday.  

“What a beautiful boy,” she said, remarking at Koita’s gesture. “What a beautiful boy.”

“Those were the last words before she went into a deep sleep,” Fowler said. 

Last month, Fowler drove Koita’s mom to Drexel’s senior day at Vidas Field. It was only the second collegiate game she was able to attend.  

Koita will be the first member of his family to graduate from college in June when he receives a bachelor’s degree in marketing with a minor in economics. This week, he had a job interview with a medical sales company. He’s exploring grad school options in Europe. 

“It’s sort of a Hallmark story,” Fowler said. 

First, Koita has at least one more game guaranteed with the team he kept telling Fowler he knew could have been special in 2020 if it were not for the pandemic. It’s why he trained at the West Bronx Recreation Center after a long days of work as a management intern at Sciame Construction throughout last summer and fall. He upped his conditioning and cut down from 235 pounds to 215 to prepare for the quicker style of draws coming to college lacrosse in 2021. 

The hardest part was not having anyone to train against, but Koita never made excuses. 

“As soon as I found out we had the ability to come back, I didn’t even question it,” Koita said of his decision to return for a fifth year. “I was fully on board because the job wasn’t finished and we didn’t get to finish up the right way and do the things that we wanted to do.” 

The hiccups in preparation were evident after a two-week COVID pause in February afforded Drexel only one week of real practice before the Dragons’ first game. Still, Koita maintained belief in himself. 

“What we’re seeing now is him getting comfortable and confident in his technique,” Gurenlian said. “I'm glad they made the tournament, because he’s just started to figure it out and now has an opportunity on the biggest stage against two of the top guys in the country to show what he’s got.” 

Koita will face his sternest test of the season in Notre Dame’s Kyle Gallagher and Charlie Leonard. Both players were selected in last month’s Premier Lacrosse League draft. 

Koita views the matchup as an opportunity. “I always play my best when I play against the best,” he said. 

He texted Fowler a similar sentiment the other day. 

“The road to the final four is going to be very tough, but if there is anyone who can lead a group of men to that, I think Jimmeh’s the one,” Fowler said. “Great things are gonna happen for him.”