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M

ost people would be satisfied after shooting a lacrosse ball 115 miles per hour.

Jarrod Neumann was not. 

The week before the inaugural Premier Lacrosse League All-Star Game and skills competition, Neumann practiced taking 10-yard step-down shots. He hit 118 mph. Twice.

“So I was a little disappointed that I didn’t have that extra pop,” Neumann recalled last summer a couple weeks after he took first place in the PLL Fastest Shot competition. “I also did just play a full game, so it was a very different experience.”

“Different” doesn’t do justice to describe the Chaos defenseman’s meteoric rise to the height of the sport. At age 26, the 2019 PLL Defensive Player of the Year is just getting started. If Whipsnakes attackman Matt Rambo, the PLL’s regular season and championship game MVP, became the cherubic face of the league, Neumann turned into its boisterous voice. Whether through his post-goal remarks (“You should’ve slid again!”) or his post-game pronouncements (“We drop bombs!” alluding to Chaos’ knack for scoring 2-point goals), few made a brighter — or louder — star turn in a league whose motto is “We the Players.”

“He’s a guy that walks the walk 100 percent of the way,” Chaos coach Andy Towers said. “That allows him to talk the talk. He does both, and I think that shows an extreme level of confidence in his preparation.”

Neumann’s style and his attire are the opposite of subtle. From his custom hand-painted “Bomb Squad” gloves and arm pads by Kicks by Carly, to his fluorescent Epoch lacrosse stick with rainbow tape that he broke during the fastest shot competition, to the gold chain that bobs up and down on his chest when he sprints across the midline, he likes to make a statement.

In the wake of George Floyd’s death and protests across the country against racial injustice, a quick glance at Neumann’s social media accounts made it easy to know where he stood. He took part in Blackout Tuesday. He shared videos of the protests, Redwoods attackman Jules Heningburg’s “Standing at the Crossroads” essay and Barack Obama’s Medium post titled, “How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change.”

“This obviously needed to happen,” Neumann said. “And it’s sad and heartbreaking that some people don’t recognize the change that needs to be made.”

Yet Neumann, who is biracial, was reluctant to issue a statement of his own. “Some lacrosse situations have been much worse,” he said. “I’ve seen it and I’ve dealt with it, but I don’t think I’ve dealt with it on the same level that a lot of other kids have.”

From a young age, growing up in the large politically liberal community of Northampton in western Massachusetts, Neumann learned the way people are perceived or think about each other based on the color of their skin is not always right. Shelly LaFountain-Neumann oversaw a home that included her son Jarrod, his stepbrother Glenn LaFountain and numerous friends who would stay with them for months at a time. The reasons varied. Some fled abusive households. Others didn’t want to leave Northampton when their parents moved. 

“They were family,” Neumann said. “They called the same place home that I did. They would do anything for me, and I would do anything for them.”

Neumann’s mom used to say that they lived in the “house of nations” because of its diversity. 

“She holds no judgement or any prejudice towards anyone and will lend a helping hand to whoever she can whenever she can,” Neumann said.

That wasn’t the case when they ventured outside. There were stares at grocery stores when one of his “siblings” called Shelly “mom.” On the courts and fields of play, racist taunts were commonplace.

“It happened a lot,” Neumann said. “It was part of growing up when you’re not a white American male in America.”

“Don’t let other people get under your skin,” his mom would tell him. “You have to be mentally tougher than them.”

Shelly LaFountain-Neumann worked various construction jobs from painting to dry wall to laying concrete to installing roofs to make ends meet. “Anything that has to do with remodeling or refinishing a home she’s done,” he said. She’d “go without,” so they wouldn’t. While she bought Neumann a pair of Lebron VIII “Entourage” basketball sneakers, he remembers her wearing the same pair of running shoes throughout his childhood. Before his mother would leave for bartending shifts, Neumann would help her make giant portions of classic Polish dishes like goulash.

The situation also fed his competitiveness. “He was always active and always hungry for more from a very young age,” Shelly LaFountain-Neumann said.

Jarrod would tag along with Glenn, seven years his senior, to the South End Community Center on Howard Street in Springfield. What’s now an MGM Casino used to be the hub for pickup basketball games. Neumann was never content to sit on the sidelines.

“If I want to play with the big boys, I have to step it up. I have to work harder,” he said. “I have to be better than them, smarter, more skilled, more savvy.”

Neumann played defense when no one else would. He didn’t flinch when opponents threw elbows. He turned into a highly touted basketball recruit who harbored ambitions to play at the NCAA Division I level. But in the spring of his senior year at Northampton High School, he took a chance that shaped the rest of his athletic future.

“When we talk about great American stories, Jarrod is in some ways the great lacrosse story,” said Matt Striebel, the three-time U.S. national team midfielder and National Lacrosse Hall of Famer and former coach at Northampton. “He came from nowhere in a lacrosse sense and reached the pinnacle of the game through all the virtues you want a player to have.”

Lacrosse was the blank page on which Neumann could write his own story.

Striebel’s first encounter with Neumann has all the elements of a great origin story. It also has morphed over time. Neumann likes to say Striebel approached him in the parking lot at Northampton High School and “bribed” him to play with offers of team gear. Striebel counters that Neumann, after some coaxing from his friends Andy Kuon and Justin Golec, who played lacrosse, made the introduction.

Striebel, whose litany of accomplishments also include two NCAA championships at Princeton and three Major League Lacrosse titles, was a first-year head coach looking to fill out his roster. Neumann was 6-foot-4. He fit the bill.

Still, Striebel didn’t want to take on a senior who was checked out and would be a drag on the team’s culture. A conversation with Rey Harp, Northampton’s basketball coach, dispelled those worries. Harp told Striebel that Neumann was a five-position defender who possessed the intangible that all great players have: the need to do whatever it takes to win.

“No matter what he does on the field,” Harp assured Striebel,“he’ll be an asset to your program.”

Striebel committed to take Neumann under his wing after that first practice when he dominated the conditioning drills. “Jarrod chewed on hard work,” Striebel said. “You could see the way he savored it.” He told Neumann he’d do whatever he could to help him. In exchange, he asked Neumann to do everything the right way at each stop. “So far Jarrod has done that,” Striebel said. “He’s more than held up his end of the bargain.”

Striebel reached out to his then-Rochester Rattlers teammate John Galloway, an assistant at Providence College at the time, to get Neumann added to the school’s prospect day. The Friars coaches were intrigued by Neumann despite his rawness.

“We knew he had a long way to go in terms of his skill level, but you can’t teach the level of athleticism he displayed,” Providence head coach Chris Gabrielli said. “It was a no-brainer just watching him run around.”

After the clinics, Gabrielli took Neumann on a tour of the campus that ended with a stop at the basketball team’s practice facility. In the middle of their conversation, Neumann leaped up, grabbed the rim and clung to it. He kept talking for about a minute while suspended midair. He was wearing flip flops. “What lacrosse guy can do that type of thing?” Gabrielli asked.

Gabrielli recalled the first time he saw Neumann pick up a golf club about five years ago. He reared back and took a Happy Gilmore swing that sent the ball more than 300 yards down the center of the fairway.

Neumann’s development on the lacrosse field, though, was more of a process. It was also a feedback loop. The more he improved, the harder he worked. He’d spend an hour before and after practice with Galloway.

“I wanted to put in the work so my teammates didn’t feel like I was a liability in the stick-skill department,” Neumann said. “I wanted to be trusted. I was trusted enough to guard the best players on the opposing teams, but I wasn’t trusted to throw and catch consistently, and I didn’t want that. I wanted to be ‘the guy’ all around and not one dimension.”

“He was just a sponge and fell in love with the game,” Gabrielli said. “I think that’s what allowed him to take it to another level.”

Neumann is grateful for the people around him who realized his potential and helped channel his relentless drive. Gabrielli also recognized Neumann’s leadership potential and named him captain when he was only a sophomore.

Neumann’s best games often came when he played opponents a second time. There was the 12-7 win over Hofstra, then ranked 12th in the nation, his junior year. The year before, Sam Llinares torched Providence for four goals and four assists. Neumann took it personally. He didn’t let it happen again. He held Llinares to one goal and one assist. (The Friars defense also blanked an attackman by the name of Josh Byrne.)

By his senior year, Neumann established himself as an elite lacrosse player, and not just an athlete. He was named the Big East Defensive Player of the Year and a second-team All-American. Still, Gabrielli said Neumann’s “coming out party” did not occur until the Big East tournament. The games were on CBS Sports Network. Those who watched on TV or were in the stands got a primer for the chaos Neumann would unleash in the PLL. In the semifinal against Villanova, the Friars avenged a 15-7 loss less than a week earlier. Neumann was pivotal in the 10-7 win.

“He was a presence the whole game and really willed our defense to be confident and get the win,” said Tate Boyce, who played with Neumann for two years at Providence and was a two-time Big East Goalie of the Year.

Boyce can still vividly recall when Neumann pursued Christian Cuccinello outside the restraining box and stayed locked on him like he was in a full-court press. Cuccinello eventually took a knee and rolled the ball into the corner. He had enough. The win clinched the Friars’ first appearance in the Big East title game and set a program record for victories.

“Almost anyone who had the opportunity to play with Jarrod could see that he was on an upward trajectory the whole time,” Boyce said. “We all knew he had a really high ceiling to do big things and he has.”

Jake Froccaro was on the losing side that Thursday night against the Friars. It was the last game of his collegiate career. Heading into the PLL training camp last May at IMG Academy in Florida, he knew Neumann was a big, fast player who had only taken up the game a few years earlier. He did not know much else about his new teammate.

“I didn’t like him that much just from playing against him,” Froccaro said. “I respected him because he’s a great player, but going into it I didn’t really know what to expect.”

But at IMG Academy, they hit it off almost immediately and became fast friends while recalling their Big East battles. Neumann, who attended Providence on a Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship, has a knack for bringing people together.

“He’s a very intense competitor and has that alpha mentality on the field, but off the field he’s open arms,” Boyce said.

This spring, Neumann organized Zoom calls and happy hours to build chemistry with his Chaos teammates. Back in his Providence days, he used to host Thanksgiving dinners for his fellow Friars who couldn’t go home during the break. His mom would bring her famous stuffing.

“If you don’t get along with Jarrod or are not drawn to him, I feel like you’re insecure to some degree,” Towers said. “He exudes a level of confidence, but playfulness. He’s very serious in his focus, but he’s also very loose and lighthearted off the field. That equates to a swagger and confidence that people are very attracted to.”

Neumann demonstrated that trademark confidence when he kept asking Towers and defensive coordinator Ryan Curtis for the toughest matchup each weekend. He spent two years on the now-defunct Florida Launch in Major League Lacrosse apprenticing under Tucker Durkin. The PLL provided an opportunity to showcase his talents and step into a leading role. He set the tone early in training camp with some epic battles against MVP finalist Connor Fields. “If I can guard Connor, I can guard anyone,” Neumann said.

After Week 3, when he held Joey Sankey to no goals and one assist in a 12-11 OT win over the Redwoods, the coaches acceded. “From there it kind of took off,” Towers said.

The next week, in a win against the Archers at Homewood Field, Neumann scored a pair of 2-point goals to gain membership in the “Bomb Squad,” which at the time consisted of Froccaro and long-stick midfielder Matt Rees. Neumann converted on five of his 14 shots in the regular season, all from behind the 2-point arc. His average goal came from 18 yards out. Perhaps more remarkable, his shot was only saved twice.

“It’s heat,” said former Chaos goalie Charlie Cipriano, now with the Waterdogs, who faced Neumann’s shot frequently in practice. “You know it’s a heavy shot. The crazy thing too is how fast he can get it off. It’s almost like an extended short stick.”

Neumann likes to put spin on the ball by twisting his stick as he rears back to shoot, creating a spin that gives it extra life as it bounces off the turf. The defenseman who used to rarely venture over the midline is now a two-way force whose game has no boundaries. The Chaos won every game when Neumann hit a 2-pointer.

“It’s not very often that you have a [close] defenseman that is a legitimate offensive threat, but every time he crosses the midfield line he has the potential to score,” Froccaro said.

Neumann’s proficiency beyond the arc and the hype around the Bomb Squad, though, overshadowed his progression on the defensive end to some extent. Precision footwork and position don’t generate the same social media buzz as the long ball. He gets mistaken for a long-stick middie almost as often as people misspell his first name.

Neumann knows where his primary responsibility rests. “I pride myself on being a great defender first,” he said.

That made last year’s Defensive Player of the Year award all the more validating. The first person Neumann called after winning the award was his mom.

Yet, Neumann focuses not on what he’s accomplished, but how he can get better. He talks about the nuances of the position like it’s his craft. He carries the self-belief he can guard anyone, but he’s humble enough to know what he doesn’t know. When Atlas midfielder and PLL co-founder Paul Rabil asked him what areas of his game he’d like to improve on the podcast “Unbuckled Chinstrap,” Neumann answered immediately: “Everything.”

When Neumann played T-ball, he wasn’t allowed to hit off the tee because he’d hit the ball too far. He quickly proved he could hit pitches and moved up an age group.

In eighth grade, Neumann saw one of his friends on the other team try to dunk unsuccessfully in layup lines. When they faced each other a month later in the playoffs, Neumann rocked the rim with ease.

At Northampton, Neumann learned lacrosse fundamentals by watching his teammates catch and throw or how they’d hold their stick on defense. “The thing I love about Jarrod is that I know he is going to devour whatever information he gets,” Striebel said.

While earning his MBA at Providence and serving as the grad assistant, Neumann also got an advanced degree in shooting from the Friars’ offense. 

Now, when Neumann sees Fields pull off an unorthodox dodge or Jack Rowlett perform a crazy takeaway check, he does not hesitate to probe them about their moves. He constantly asks “how” and “why,” so he can add to his repertoire.

A real estate development manager at Procaccianti Companies in Cranston, Rhode Island, Neumann knows the importance of location. He lives about a mile from Chapey Field. Before last year’s PLL training camp or Fall Classic and Spring Premiere with Team USA, he’d stop by at the end of Providence practices to take some one-on-one reps. Gabrielli usually has to ask him to drop his stick so the Friars attackmen don’t have to ice their arms afterward. 

While Neumann has come a long way from those early days at Northampton, when Striebel watches film he gets even more excited for his future.

“He’s guarding guys basically the way you would guard someone in basketball,” Striebel said. “You could give Jarrod a short stick and he’d probably be as effective as a defender. As he continues to develop and understand positioning and give offensive players a little more room, it’s going to be impossible to get by him.”

The Chaos hope that will be the case later this summer when the PLL Championship Series commences in late July. Although they clinched the No. 1 playoff seed in 2019, they lost their last three games. The defense that ranked fourth in goals allowed (129) during the regular season surrendered a combined 27 goals in two playoff defeats to the Whipsnakes and Redwoods.

All of the Chaos’ roster attrition in the offseason came on the defensive end, with Cipriano, Kyle McClancy and team captain Brodie Merrill all selected in the expansion draft by the Waterdogs.

“I’m excited to step up into that role and hopefully fill it the best I can,” Neumann said.

To better handle more physical opponents like Rambo, Neumann’s gains this offseason came mostly in the weight room. He weighed 208 pounds at the end of last season. This spring, he was up to 240, but he plans to cut down a bit as he incorporates more running and sprint training into his regimen.

“I’ve always heard Utah was a beautiful place, so I’m just excited to get back out there and compete again,” Neumann said the day PLL announced the series would be held at Zions Bank Stadium in Salt Lake City. His No. 1 fan will have to watch on NBC.

“You should have done this,” Shelly LaFountain-Neumann will often inform her son after most contests, eager to offer her opinion.

“I know,” Jarrod will respond. “I was in the game.”

Last summer, she watched him play in person at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., in Week 1 and at Albany in Week 10. She even drove 15 hours to Columbus, Ohio, to watch him play the Whipsnakes at MAPFRE Stadium and surprise him for his 26th birthday. At the game, which the Chaos lost 15-7, she wore a personally customized red T-shirt with Neumann’s name, number and the words “Proud Mom” in white lettering.

The final score did not stifle her pride.

“There are no words to describe how happy that made me as a mom to watch my son reach his dream,” she said.