Recently, 'Prince' senior writer Austin Starkweather sat down with men's lacrosse's junior attackman Josh White.
P: Josh, I'm going to give you a couple names of guys on the team, and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. What about the goalie, [junior] Julian Gould?
W: Calm, cool, collected.
P: [Junior defender] Damien Davis.
W: The vocal leader. How do you say someone's an incredible leader? He's the quintessential leader. If I was building a Ranger platoon, he's the kind of guy I'd build it around. One time, we were out playing a North-South game of team paintball. We took the liberty of moving the Mason Dixon line North to Morris, NJ or so. Of course, the South won because of my military skills and Damien had his own fully automatic paintball gun.
P: [Senior defender] Scott Farrell.
W: A genius, an unsung hero. [Ryan] Mollett's ['01] a great player, but he got a lot of press last year for some other things that he did. Farrell is a great defenseman.
P: Last year, on the day of houseparties, I got some real good quotes from Matt Bailer '01 at the NCAA Tournament selection show about Mollett.
W: All I can remember is that we weren't supposed to drink. This girl had a glass of champagne with vodka in it and went up to me and started pouring it down my throat. Of course I couldn't spill any of it on my shirt because I'd reek of alcohol, so I had to drink it all.
P: Of course.
W: Then, I look at her and say 'What time is it?' And it's like 7:50, so I had 10 minutes to get to the football field for the show. We get to the elevator going up, and John Walsh is in there with CVS aftershave, splashing it on people to cover up the smell.
P: [Sophomore midfielder] Drew Casino.
W: Renaissance Man. He's in Shere Khan, a high school gymnast and diver. A good faceoff man. Also a very smart guy.
P: [Junior midfielder] Brad Dumont.
W: He's my punching bag. I kicked Brad Dumont's ass one time. I definitely fouled him in practice. I pushed him from behind, but we ended up landing where I was on top of him and the dumb kid looks up at me and hits me — not a very good position to start a fight with someone. So, I'm like, ok, Brad, so I went to town on him.
P: [Junior midfielder] Owen Daly.
W: Owen's the guy I always beat at NBA 2K2. I'll let him be the West All Stars or something, and I'll be some horrible team like the Nuggets, and I'll still kill him.
P: [Senior attackman] B.J. Prager.
W: He still hasn't finished his thesis. It's about a week late right now and still has an entire chapter to write. I guess the word for him would be procrastinator.
P: [Senior attackman] Brendan Tierney.
W: Quiet. He's in a very difficult situation. I was in the same situation with my dad as the coach in high school, but this is on a whole different level. It's not high school lacrosse. Brendan handles the situation so well and I give him respect for that. Also, unlike B.J., he finished his thesis over Christmas.
P: [Sophomore attackman] Ryan Boyle.
W: Mouth, he's always talking to the ref. We used to have this tradition called 'crapper'. On the first away victory, the freshmen have to come to the front of the bus and do skits. If they're not funny, then we stick them in the bathroom on the bus, so we loaded eight of them in there on Saturday. Sean was last year's emcee, and it's supposed to be passed down to a sophomore attackman, but Hart gets up there and says 'the tradition is that this is supposed to be passed down to a sophomore attackman, and Boyle's the only sophomore attackman. We hear enough of him already, so, Drew Casino.'
P: [Junior attackman] Sean Hartofilis.
W: He's another one of those laid back, no worries type of guy. He's amazing at what he does, but doesn't care about it. He's put in his work, but he doesn't want to talk about it.
P: Sean Nadelene, the new assistant coach from Johns Hopkins.
W: Nads? I don't trust Nads, I feel like I always have to look over his shoulder, especially when we play Hopkins, since that's where he went to school.
P: What about Coach Tierney?
W: Coach Tierney has a reputation of being a yeller and pretty hot tempered on the sidelines, but he is much more calm and mild mannered this year.
This is because he has enlisted the services of a sports psychologist by the name of Ward Kuzer. He works with the team and has us stare at raisins to clear our thoughts. We look at ourselves in the mirror and say nice things about our teammates. His work with Coach T has had great results. Ward or the 'Kuze' as we call him is the reason we've been able to turn this season around and get back on track.
Actually, though, I can't use one word to describe him. He's one of those guys that I'm going to appreciate a lot more after I graduate. I appreciate my dad and how hard he raised me. I used to want to run away. That's the same with Coach Tierney. I might tell myself that I want to quit all the time because things aren't going well, but I know what he does transcends lacrosse. That's the truth.
P: What did you do after high school at St. Mary's in Annapolis?
W: I wasn't in any hurry to go to college. I wasn't ready, I wanted to try some different things. Originally, I was thinking of just taking a year off – traveling, or going to language school. One day, my dad just said "Hey, how about you go talk to a recruiter or something?" My dad was in the army and the navy, so I was introduced to the military at a pretty young age. I went and talked to them, it sounded pretty good. I wrote Dean Fred [Hargadon] and he gave me the permission to take two years off.
P: How long did it take for you to go from 'hmm...I might take a language somewhere' to 'gee, I should just join the army?'
W: It was a three-week process. I was thinking about Germany to study language for a year, then maybe the Peace Corps, and then to the army.
P: Where did you go, what did you do?
W: The first thing I did was basic training in Fort Benning, Ga. It was so hot. Weatherwise, the heat in full uniforms. 17 weeks of basic training. After that, I went to three weeks of jump school. The first week, you jump off tables and fall into pits. The second week, you jump off towers on a zip-line. The third and final week is jump week where you do a bunch of jumps, including night jumps, and combat equipment jumps with all the equipment.
After that three weeks, I went to the Ranger Indoctrination Program, which is another three weeks. The first week's classroom stuff and then testing on Ranger history and map reading. The second two weeks is out in the woods trying to make people quit. Sometimes, they'll do this thing at night called the mind eraser where they'll put a lamp in the ground and you just run around it for hours. They're just trying to get people to quit and weed out the mentally weak. The whole time they're like 'you're still good Americans if you quit. It's no big deal if you do.'
I got through that. Once you get through RIP, you're a Ranger and you're assigned to one of the Ranger battalions. I'd never lived off the East Coast, so I asked and was assigned to go to the one in Fort Louis, Washington. I was shipped out there for the remaining two years.
So you go to your Ranger Batallion and once they think you're ready, you go to Ranger school which is another three month school. It's a leadership school where they put you in various leadership roles and try to simulate battleship stress by sleep and food deprivation. So they'll give you two MRE's and averaging maybe two hours of sleep a night. I went through a winter class in the mountains of Georgia. It's freezing cold. There were nights that we didn't stop all night long, because it was so cold. We just walked all night long. I lost 50 pounds during that school. When you're not being graded for leadership, we would just plan the meal of our first night off. The three of us ended up going to Outback for like a $190 bill.
P: Are you ever tired here at Princeton?
W: Oh yeah, I've definitely adapted to the college student's sleep pattern of going to bed at three and up at 10. I still function better than most without sleep.
P: So, did you participate in Outdoor Action your freshman year?
W: No, I actually almost didn't get out of the army in time. They weren't letting me out. They finally let me out with the help of some people.
P: Are you still on reserve?
W: Yeah, I'm still in the reserves.
P: What else did you do after Ranger school?
W: I got to travel all over the world. Thailand with Delta Force. It was 12 of us and 12 of them. We went for the first two weeks for climatization, which translates to party. We just hung out in Bangkok for two weeks to 'get used to the weather.' And then for the second two weeks, we were in the mountains and taught the Thai soldiers how to establish a border patrol. I went to Germany, Panama, Jordan, all over the U.S. Sometimes, we would load up onto airplanes, fly out of Washington for a few hours, rig up with our parachutes and say 'where are we? Oh, South Carolina...ok.'
I was getting paid pretty well for an 18 year old, traveled the world, jumped out of airplanes, shot amazing weapons at tanks. When I wasn't in Ranger School, I was fed three meals a day and woke up to Mt. Rainier every day. It was a time to mature and become more disciplined.
P: My girlfriend is in AFROTC, and I think she could probably kick your ass. What do you have to say about that?
W: I don't know, I wouldn't fight against her. I know some of the ROTC people around here, and I really respect them a lot for what they do. I entertained the thought of doing that when I came here, but I think that that, lacrosse, and school would have been too much. I think I'm still thinking about a career in the military in some sort of way. As far as her kicking my ass, I don't know.
That was one of the great things — the training we got hand-to-hand. We got great training, jujitsu. One morning a week, we did combatives where we would fight each other. It was a lot of fun and comes in handy every now and then. It definitely helps me keep my little bigger brother in line. He's a freshman lacrosse player at Loyola. He talks a lot.
P: Now, you play attack and you're listed as an attack but you're a midfielder, right?
W: Yeah, my three years, I've been all over the place. I started the first two games my freshman year at attack. Sean Hartofilis and I were competiting for time. They then moved me to midfield because I guess they thought Sean was kind of slow and lazy. But, so, I played midfield, and last year I separated my shoulder after missing seven games. I was back at attack, and I guess the coaches reason was that I wouldn't be in the open field getting the blind checks and stuff.
Half the time, I don't know what I am. My dad's like 'so, what are you this week?' and I'm like, 'I don't really know.' Sometimes, I'll practice all week at attack and then won't step on the field as an attackman.
P: You're doing pretty well this year. 10 goals, four assists. Are you happy about your production?
W: Some of it, I guess is the nature of the game. Some of those games, I wish I had the ball in my stick because I felt I was playing really well – like 'Cuse and Virginia. I thought I was pretty hot in those games, but we just never got the ball back.
P: What team would you want to play again? If you could play any team?
W: I'd like to play Virginia. Because I hate them. I would want to play Virginia again. I guess for recruiting experiences. One time, I had a recruiting trip set up. I was supposed to go down there on Halloween weekend for the big Virginia-Florida State football game. I'd only taken one visit before this, I guess it was my Carolina visit, and I knew I wasn't going to go there. The assistant coach asked me two days before going 'honestly, right now, if you haven't made the decision, where would you go?' And I said, 'I haven't looked at all the schools and I have no idea what they're all about, but I'm probably leaning towards Princeton.' And he goes, 'Ok, that's what we thought, that's the consensus out there and every coach knows that. We're going to save our money and ask you not to come down this weekend.' I was being honest with him, and see where that got me. Who knows, I could have gone down there, had a great time and loved it.
P: Have you ever gotten in a fight post-Army training days?
W: Did you read the article about the kid that broke the Ivy Club clock? I was walking back to Ivy late at night with a friend, going to get my jacket around 3:30 in the morning. I hear this crash, bang, crash and I see this kid running out of there. So I grab him and tackle him and I tell the girl to go in there and find out what happened. This kid had smashed the grandfather clock to pieces. So I had him on the ground and I was like, 'give me your ID.' The kid was wasted, had no idea where he was. He gets up and starts screaming 'stop hurting me.' I never hit him or anything. He had dropped his keys that had one of those 'if found, return here.' So I went home, and the proctors come by around 5 a.m. and took me out to Ivy. I was being questioned by Princeton police and the proctors, and all of a sudden, the kid comes by looking for his keys and I'm like 'Hey, that's the kid right there.' I've been subpoenaed as a witness in the trial.
Also, freshman year, Trevor Tierney, Josh Sims, Chris Barry and I went on a little road trip to North Carolina to see the first round of a game between Princeton and Virginia. I was real, real rowdy, said some things that I probably shouldn't have to one of the Virginia players, and I was kicked out of the stadium by the NCAA officials.
P: Did you ever wrestle Damien Davis in high school?
W: Yeah, three times.
P: Who won?
W: I did, all three times.
P: I thought he was an All-American wrestler.
W: I was too. I was two years older than him, though. When I was a junior and he was a freshman, we wrestled once and then twice the next year.
P: He's gotten pretty big. Do you think you could still take him?
W: No problem.
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