Also central to Reeves’ makeup is a drive to help others.
Last summer, he worked in a lab at the University of Rochester’s Medical Center, studying lung development in prematurely born babies. They received lungs from babies ranging from a day old to 10 years, and would look at different stem cell types, with a keen focus on fibrotic diseases.
“It was a really awesome experience,” Reeves says. “I enjoyed the lab and all the parts that came with it.”
Reeves also is in the midst of applying to and interviewing for jobs in New York City and back home near Rochester, then plans to apply to medical school in a year or two. He’s not sure what he’d want to focus on come medical school. He once told Hill he wanted to cure cancer. Now cardiology and neurology pique his interest the most. Further, if his schedule allows, Reeves hopes to play in Major League Lacrosse.
When Reeves is back home in the winter and summers, he also makes a point of helping out with the Palmyra-Macedon program. Lefties look up to him. “As much as I love that and appreciate it, I hope he’s playing in some important games late in the season,” Hill says.
That brings up perhaps the most pressing point about Yale in 2018: figuring out how to go deep into the NCAA tournament. In Reeves’ first three years, the Bulldogs have successively lost in the first round to Maryland, Navy and Syracuse.
From that, Reeves, also a soccer and football player in his younger days, says Yale fully expects a final four appearance and to be playing at Gillette Stadium come Memorial Day weekend. That all starts, he adds, with getting to the Ivy League tournament and squashing their NCAA tournament kryptonite.
What looms larger, though, is the legacy Reeves could leave behind.
“The one thing I want to leave behind is elevating Yale lacrosse and Yale athletics more,” Reeves says. “I want to put them on a national scale and to get them considered more of a national powerhouse than they’ve been traditionally. I really want that to be reinforced in the lacrosse world.”
Hill hopes Reeves’ legacy has a holistic element, too.
“He works extremely hard, and that’s what he’ll leave with people,” Hill says. “He used to play wall ball and work out and come home to study for three or four hours. In my 16 years of coaching in multiple sports, I’ve honestly never encountered it before.”
That’s likely because few encounter people like Reeves.
“A lot of people could get admitted to Yale and say I’m going to coast and do whatever, but it’s not what he’s done in the slightest,” Shay says. “Every day he’s here, he’s really gotten the most out of this.”