Back in the College Game, Dave Cottle Coaching Navy with an Edge

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — It almost had to be seen to be truly believed. Yet there he was last week, sitting in an office in Ricketts Hall, about the only embellishment a display of championship rings from his time with the Chesapeake Bayhawks. 

Yes, Dave Cottle was back in the college game, nearly a decade and a half since his stint at Maryland concluded. So what in the world brought Cottle back to run Navy’s offense after Michael Phipps departed for Maryland in December? 

“It was probably the only place I would come to help,” said Cottle, noting he’d lived in Annapolis for 20 years and the Bayhawks played at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. “It was the job — how it ended and the timing that it ended. I had back surgery on September 1 and I couldn’t play golf, so I was bored out of my mind.” 

Typical Cottle, a reasonable explanation with some wry humor mixed in.

Some things never change, including a gleeful devotion to tweaking offenses that always gave Cottle a hint of a lacrosse mad scientist. And with plenty of time on his hands — a physician-imposed, six-month golf moratorium doesn’t end until the start of March — he embraced the opportunity to improve Navy’s offense heading into Saturday’s season opener against Mount St. Mary’s.

He already knew Navy coach Joe Amplo; Cottle consulted on Marquette’s coaching search when the school selected Amplo to launch the program. He coached Midshipmen defensive coordinator John Orsen with the Bayhawks. Mark Goers, Navy’s longtime director of lacrosse operations, was a Bayhawks assistant.

And Amplo had a good idea what he was getting, too.

“We weren’t doing things badly, per se,” Amplo said. “He’s taking what we were doing, and he’s observing and he’s attempting to make it operate at an elite level. The level of detail he’s putting into our schemes, the level of thought he’s putting into it is something I haven’t been around that often. Our individual work has taken on a life I’ve dreamed about.”

That bodes well for a Navy offense depleted by injuries last spring. The final numbers weren’t particularly pleasant: Out of 75 teams playing a Division I schedule, the Mids ranked 63rd in goals per game (10.25), 64th in man-up offense (24.4 percent) and 74th in shooting percentage (22.6 percent) en route to an 8-8 finish.

Yet there is unquestionably intriguing talent. Midfielder Max Hewitt is coming off back-to-back 30-point seasons. Attackman Henry Tolker scored a team-high 27 goals last season. Senior Xavier Arline (17 goals, 16 assists in 12 games) doesn’t have to juggle football responsibilities. Dane Swanson, who had a strong sophomore year, should be a factor after dealing with injuries in 2023.

And while Cottle hasn’t been there long, he’s already made an impression on the Mids with his communication skills.

“It’s very open,” Hewitt said. “He’ll tell you where you need to get better, but he’s also going to be the first one where if you do something well, he’s going to tell you. It doesn’t matter who’s around and what the scenario is, if you’re a player and you make a great play, he’s going to tell you.”

THE LATEST CHAPTER IN THE DAVE COTTLE STORY BEGINS, appropriately enough, with a quintessential Dave Cottle story.

Cottle has a well-earned reputation for being plugged into the lacrosse world and beyond. As Amplo tells it, it’s a major reason why he applied for the Marquette job in the first place. If Cottle was going to have some influence in coaching searches, Amplo felt he needed to get to know him.

“He’s in the know,” Amplo said. “He always has a way of being in the know.”

The two speak regularly, so it wasn’t surprising when Cottle’s name popped up on his phone’s caller ID in December. It came at a precarious time. Maryland offensive coordinator Jake Bernhardt had departed for the head coaching job at Division III Colby in November, and Phipps — a former Terp who played for Cottle and coordinated Georgetown’s offense before moving on to Navy — was a logical candidate.

“He said to me, ‘You know, if something ever opens up on your staff, you’re one of the few guys I’d consider coming to work for,’” Amplo said. “And I basically said to him, in not so many kind words, ‘What the heck do you know? Because you’re not going to fool me into thinking that you’re just calling me to be nice and say some nice things to me, OK? [Have you] forgot where I came from? You can pull the wool over someone else’s eyes, but not mine.’

“So he swore up and down that he didn’t know, but at that moment I knew that fear of losing Michael was pretty relevant, because if Cottle makes that phone call, it’s pretty much going to happen or it’s done.”

Less than a week later, Phipps left for Maryland. And Amplo was left to ruminate on the potential of having Cottle on staff. Would it be intimidating for him? Would it be a complete positive? And Amplo didn’t need long to embrace the possibility of teaming with a person who he felt had been looking out for him since he got the Marquette job.

And in practice? Cottle says he’s having fun. Spending a few hours each day on the practice field has helped with his recovery from surgery. Plus, he has plenty of time to invest in this team.

“I’ve got nothing but this,” Cottle said. “I’m too injured to do anything athletically. When I leave here, I don’t put it down. But these coaches — John’s the next great coach and Joe’s a great coach and [assistant] Blake [Miller] has got tremendous intuition and he’s been great to work with. We’re trying to push this offense to an improved level.”

How that evolves will be a fascinating slice of the college lacrosse season.

“He’s not going to come back into this world and be vulnerable enough if he didn’t believe in something here,” Amplo said. “Not just because he has a relationship with me where him and I trust each other and care about each other. That’s not it. That’s part of it, but that’s not it. He sees something here and he has something to prove, and I think he’s coaching with an edge. And Dave Cottle with an edge? Sign me up to be a part of that.”

COTTLE’S EXPERIENCE — WIITH THE BAYHAWKS, WITH MARYLAND, WITH LOYOLA BEFORE THAT — IS EXTENSIVE. But he hasn’t seen everything, as he was reminded at practice last week.

“We’re playing in the fog, and at 5 o’clock, [Evening] Colors plays, and they all stand at attention,” Cottle said. “I think that’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. That’s been enjoyable for me and I’m just hoping we can help the team reach their potential.”

Doing so means working with a group accustomed to change. Cottle is Navy’s third offensive coordinator in as many years, and Hewitt said players have appreciated the process of working through various tweaks over the last month.

At the same time, they’ve also learned about how much Cottle values a consistently high standard.

“It’s no secret our man-up wasn’t great last year,” Hewitt said. “We had a practice where it was not great and afterward, he gave it to us a little bit. It was fully warranted. It’s something where the way he explained it, this feeling of how we played, how he never wants it to happen again. Right there and then, he said something about it. It was hard, but it was fair, and at the same time there was still that hope that it was going to get better.”

Cottle chortled when the possibility of a long-term return to coaching, insisting he knew this season was a time-frame he can handle. His willingness to step in also allowed Amplo to avoid passing the suboptimal timing of a staff change on to another school.

Amplo already has seen substantial improvement in Navy’s office. But he also marvels at how seamlessly Cottle has segued back into the college game.

“For an older guy who’s been out of college lacrosse for 10 years or more, he’s so relevant, he’s so relatable,” Amplo said. “He is unbelievably relatable, and he’s great at building connections. And he’s old school. I think they appreciate that. I think they appreciate the old-school sense to him. It’s the first time an assistant coach on the offensive end has dropped a note in these guys’ lockers.”

Once again, some things don’t change. And that applies to what goes into the actual job as well.

“It’s coaching,” Cottle said. “I’ve coached high school. I’ve coached pros. I’ve coached college. The non-negotiables are the non-negotiables — getting the kids to play together and play hard. If you can get the big things, then the little things take care of themselves.”