Men's Lacrosse: For star sophomore, family comes first

“He’s one of our best players,” head coach Chris Bates said. “He helps quarterback our offense. He’s the guy that really leads by example.”

Schreiber’s play is one of the few bright spots Princeton has from last year. That team went 4-8, thanks largely to a slew of injuries and a lackluster offensive performance.

“He was obviously going to play early on,” senior captain and defenseman John Cunningham said. “With the amount of injuries we suffered last year, his role just got bigger as the year went on.”

The freshman from Long Island needed little time to adjust. He scored his first collegiate goal five seconds after first touching the ball and didn’t stop there. Ultimately he racked up 16 goals and 13 assists, earning first-team All-Ivy status, third team All-America and the honor of Ivy League Rookie of the Year.

Not surprisingly, this overnight success came after a lifetime of hard work and a fine lacrosse pedigree. Schreiber’s father Doug was two-time All-America and won the 1973 NCAA Championship at the University of Maryland. Doug’s brother Chris played at Johns Hopkins, where he was a two-time national champion, and his other brother Ed was one of the top officials in NCAA lacrosse before he recently retired. Many relatives on his mother’s side also play. Tom said that he was given a lacrosse stick a few days after his birth. His father, with whom he is very close, began training and coaching him when he was very young.

“As soon as I was walking, I’d be tossing with him,” Schreiber said.

Schreiber Sr. taught his son the value of hard work and introduced him to the concept of “practice after practice.”

“I like to do things on my own once practice is over, once lift is over,” Schreiber said. “It’s just something I’ve done since I was a little kid.”

His success in high school made Tom one of the most sought-after recruits in the nation. When asked which schools were recruiting him, he essentially listed every team that has appeared in the NCAA Championship. Luckily for the Tigers, Schreiber preferred Princeton. He had friends at the University and loved the campus, which was the perfect distance from his home in East Meadow, N.Y., but perhaps the biggest attraction was the coaching. Schreiber was recruited by former head coach Bill Tierney, who led the Tigers to six national championships in the 1990s and early 2000s. Schreiber committed to Princeton in March of his junior year of high school, but Tierney left the University just three months later. Brand-new coach Chris Bates stepped in to make sure Schreiber became a Tiger.

“The day after he took the job, he came to my house,” Schreiber said. “That meant a lot.”

Despite not having moved into his office yet, Bates met with Schreiber and his family for a few hours, and a year later they were both together in the Orange Bubble.

“We knew his talent,” Bates said of his recruit. “It was no surprise that we were going to get one of the best players in the country coming out of high school, and he was all that and more.”

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His coaches and his teammates said that Schreiber was extremely coachable. He did not need coaching so much as he needed to fine-tune his abilities as the leader of an offense. This meant knowing when to be the hero and when not to be.

“Tom will at times try to put the team on his back and make a heroic play,” Bates said. “And there are times when we need that, but there are times when we need the offense to flow and to get people involved.”

He may have a tendency to try to save the day — which he did in the fourth overtime last year against Brown — but Schreiber is no ball hog. Bates compared him to Kobe Bryant because of his ability to make defenses focus on other players by not taking shots early. Senior attackman Mike Grossman used the NHL to illustrate Schreiber’s selflessness.

“He’s more of a Sydney Crosby than an Alex Ovechkin,” he said. “He doesn’t try to do too much. In that sense, he makes everyone around him better.”

The team around him certainly seems better this year. Last season, the Tigers dropped the first game of the season to Hofstra. This year they have won their first two games, defeating Hofstra in a rematch 12-6 in the season opener and doing away with Manhattan 13-7 on Tuesday. The Tigers only reached double digits three times last year, and their highest score was 11.

“We’ve been able to develop a better, stronger and smarter offense,” Schreiber said.

The offense has gotten better overall, but Princeton definitely has Schreiber to thank for its hot start. He had three goals and four assists against Hofstra and racked up four more goals and another assist against Manhattan. At both games, a large portion of the lacrosse-loving Schreiber family was in attendance. They come to the stadium frequently to support Tom, whether the Tigers are underperforming or, as is the case so far this season, dominating. Schreiber says he loves having them there.

“Everybody always knows that my family’s at the game because I have, like, 35 people at the game,” Schreiber said. “It’s awesome.”

Two of his assists in the opener went to Mike McDonald, a freshman attackman with whom Schreiber definitely clicks.

“They both have really good lacrosse IQs,” Bates said. “They’re like-minded.”

“Mikey is an amazing finisher. He can catch just about any pass, and he’s a very good shooter from the inside,” Schreiber said. “I feel like when I’m dodging, I know where he’s going to be.”

Schreiber has been described, by himself and others, as an introvert, but he is clearly embracing his role as a leader and an example for the rest of the team.

“He’s just quiet and humble and fully a team player,” Grossman said.

A player of this caliber who makes his teammates perform better can mean nothing but good things for Princeton’s resurging offense. Bates is confident that Schreiber will lead his team to great things.

“I think we’re just scratching the surface with how we can evolve on that end of the field,” he said.