Krongard ’61 seeks pro lax career at 67

Each year, a handful of Princeton graduates pursue the dream of becoming a professional athlete. Though not all succeed, most of them have at least two traits in common: youth and inexperience.

Major League Lacrosse (MLL) rookie Howard Krongard ’61 has neither.

At 67 years old, Krongard, a former bureaucrat, has dreams of playing in the MLL, the nation’s premier lacrosse league. That dream isn’t as farfetched as it might seem — the MLL’s New Jersey Pride took Krongard’s talents seriously enough to grant the Upper Montclair, N.J., resident a spot on the team’s preseason roster. The only other player on the Pride’s 35-man preseason roster who isn’t in his 20s, Jesse Hubbard ’98, is 32 years old.

Krongard, a practicing lawyer, faced a setback in his quest this past Sunday. After trying out at the Pride’s training camp in Piscataway, N.J., he realized he would not be able to beat out either of New Jersey’s two returning goalkeepers. Instead, Krongard is considering trying out for one of the MLL’s other nine teams.

“The first practice [with the Pride] went fine,” Krongard said. “But they’re happy with the two goalies they have, so if I’m going to make it in the league, it’s going to have to be someplace else.”

Krongard says he is unsure of his chances of getting picked up by another team, but if nothing else, he has a marketable resume: He is a member of the Lacrosse Hall of Fame and a two-time first-team All-Ivy selection.

While at Princeton, the Baltimore, Md., native made a name for himself when he scored the deciding goal in Princeton’s 1960 Ivy League championship win — an impressive accomplishment for a goalie.

Krongard, nicknamed “Cookie,” first considered trying his hand at professional lacrosse in January after retiring from his post as head of the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General.

“I had been wondering for a while if I could do this, if I could still play at this level,” Krongard said.

Krongard, who went to Harvard Law School immediately after receiving a degree in history from Princeton, says he would probably have tried to enter professional lacrosse after his graduation from Old Nassau. Professional lacrosse, however, did not exist in the United States for another 40 years, so Krongard instead played for a series of club lacrosse teams.

While at Harvard, Krongard played for the Boston Club, and after graduating from Harvard Law, he goaltended in England for Cambridge University’s club lacrosse team. With Cookie in goal, Cambridge won the England Universities Championship. After returning to the United States, Krongard continued to excel in goal, playing for four other teams, including the New York Club, before his first retirement from the sport in the early 1980s. The United States Club Lacrosse Association twice named Krongard Player of the Year.

In the quarter-century since Krongard hung up his stick and put away his helmet, the sport of lacrosse has changed significantly. Lacrosse is no longer the exclusive domain of suburban northeasterners, as the sport has rapidly expanded across the country in recent years.

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Modern fitness regimens and the introduction of aluminum lacrosse sticks have raised the intensity of the game, especially at its highest levels. Krongard got to witness these developments firsthand last weekend at the Pride’s training camp, where he was subjected to the lightning-fast shots of some of the world’s top lacrosse players.

“I was very surprised in how he stepped in there and took the shots,” Pride starting goalie Robert Scherr said in an interview on the team’s website. “He was getting knocks all over the place and stayed in. A lot of people don’t have the guts to even get in there at the level we do. But a [67]-year-old guy coming in — that’s pretty interesting and pretty spectacular.”

“Clearly, the guys are bigger and probably a little bit stronger,” Krongard said. “But the technology of the sticks has really improved, so the shooting velocity is a lot greater, and the shooting accuracy is a lot better.”

Krongard says that his chances of playing in the MLL are slim, but if his dreams fall through, he can always stick with his original profession: law.

If, however, he somehow manages to secure one of the league’s 20 goalie openings, Krongard says he’d “take it one year at a time.” Either way, age clearly will not play the deciding role when Krongard chooses to retire from the sport he loves.