When several Division III coaches were asked to name their player to watch in 2019, Evan Wolf’s name quickly surfaced.

The 2018 NESCAC Player of the Year is a reigning First Team All-American and one who enters his senior year at Amherst with 106 career goals and 56 assists. He’s part of an attack trio that carries serious national title aspirations, while his older brother, Jordan Wolf, played at Duke and for the U.S. national team.
 
The lacrosse part, it’s natural for him. That’s at least how Mammoths’ head coach Jon Thompson put it when asked about his two-time captain. Namely, Thompson points to an April 2016 conversation with Amherst attackmen Quinn Moroney, now an assistant coach, and Kane Haffey. It followed a 15-9 conference win at Connecticut College, when Wolf went off for seven points (four goals, three assists).

“I called them in the next day and I said you need to take him under your wing because he’s the next quarterback for us, he’s the next guy,” Thompson said. “He just took off from there.”

Wolf, humbly, doesn’t talk too much about himself on the field. That’s something he gladly leaves up to the media and other coaches. Ask Wolf about computer science, though, and he sparks to life. Yes, as in programming, binary code and developing apps. 

He planned on majoring in statistics, but his older brother, William, took up coding the summer before Wolf’s freshman year at Amherst. A bit hesitant to the idea at first, Wolf eventually took a coding course online and “fell in love with it.”

The passion has even resulted in a full-time job after school, working for Etsy in Brooklyn, N.Y. Last summer, Wolf interned with the e-commerce website as an iOS engineer.

“It doesn’t feel like work,” Wolf said. “It’s almost something I look forward to it every day. The projects, they’re way better than writing an essay or studying for an exam.”

At times, Wolf has even blended lacrosse and computer science. The summer heading into his sophomore year, Wolf developed an iOS app called Stat King.

“I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and I didn’t want some lame job,” Wolf said. “Maybe it’d be cool to learn something and build something.”

That something manifested as a way to track scoring and rosters during Amherst’s summer lacrosse camp, Good to Great. Every year, the recruiting-centric camp is attended by Division I and Division III schools, without an efficient way to accurately track and display goals, assists, ground balls and the like.

Step in Stat King, which Thompson and the staff have used.

“I said it to coaches at camp one time, it’s just a normal Amherst guy,” Thompson said. “He’s probably a better kid off the field than on it.”

That off-field component also speaks to Wolf’s place as a two-time captain, or as Amherst’s “heartbeat,” as Thompson put it. It showed most during the 2018 playoff stretch, when Wolf was kneed in his thigh vs. Bowdoin during the NESCAC quarterfinal.

He ultimately missed the NESCAC semifinal game, which they lost to Tufts, an NCAA tournament first-round game vs. Keene State and a season-ending tilt with York in the second round. Replacing the right-handed attackman was challenging enough, but Thompson was confident the likes of Colin Minicus and Jon Coffey would shoulder the load. 

The tallest ask, Thompson said, would be replacing his leadership qualities.

“It wasn’t that when he went down that we were replacing a great player,” Thompson said. “The issue was replacing our heartbeat. I knew we could get points from elsewhere, that wasn’t the issue.”

Minicus also spoke to Wolf’s captain qualities, in light of a Dartmouth prospect camp when they were both in high school. The coaches put them together in a two-man drill and they immediately clicked, long before they’d team up in the NESCAC. 

“I sort of heard about this kid, but I didn’t know the character behind him,” Minicus said. “The second we started playing together, you knew he cared about the people he plays with. He’s a natural-born leader.”

Wolf embraces that characterization, perhaps nowhere more than on the practice field. 

Minicus and Thompson both said the intensity and focus of practice noticeably drop if Wolf isn’t out there. So Wolf, no matter the time or temperature — February preseason practices in Amherst, Mass., are no joke — is out there, getting the guys going.

As a senior, he’s seen that leadership role evolve to where bringing the energy isn’t enough. Rather, it’s the bare minimum required.

“It’s been more vocal and taking charge off the field caring of our younger players,” Wolf said. “It’s having an active mindset of what I can do to help the team, who do I need to go shoot with or meet with. I want to help them.”

As the pieces come together, Amherst confidently envisions playing for the national title come Memorial Day weekend in Philadelphia, Pa. Doing so will require navigating the NESCAC, one of college lacrosse’s deepest conferences. Further, it’s home to three of the past five national champions, including Wesleyan, 2018 winners over Salisbury.

The Mammoths, per NESCAC rules, won’t start practicing until mid-February, then get underway with a conference game vs. Colby on March 2. Thompson believes they have pieces up the spine — defender Tamer Sullivan, faceoff specialist Dylan Finazzo, short-stick middie Jimmy McAfee, midfielder Matt Solberg and, of course, Wolf — to go far. 

“I actually just sent an email to the team this morning about it,” Thompson said. “It said that talent only goes so far, because a lot of teams are talented. So would you rather be an All-Star or a champion? They often go hand in hand, but the attitude should be caring less about the accolades and more about the group.”

Fueling that is Wolf, Amherst’s undisputed leader and danger-man on offense. In other words, he’s what Thompson calls an “and guy.” 

He’s a great student, player, community member and possesses all the intangibles a coach desires. The latest “and” label Wolf desires? National champion.

“Anything less isn’t good enough, plain and simple” Wolf said. “We have the guys, we have the coaching staff, we have what could be the hardest schedule. Winning a NESCAC championship would be cool, but a national one is our measuring stick.”