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I

t usually begins with a text message from Trevor Baptiste, something like this:

“Hey guys, what’s up? Want to take some reps?”

But when you’ve taken — and won — as many faceoffs as Greg Gurenlian has, you know when enough is enough.

“I’m too old for that,” the 34-year-old might say when his protégé is back home in New Jersey and thumbs the questions. (Plus, there are some logistics involved; Gurenlian lives a bit of a drive away in New York’s Westchester County and has a 4-month-old child.) So more often than not, the task lays at the feet — and hands — of their mutual friend, fellow faceoff compatriot and Garden State resident, former Major League Lacrosse veteran Jerry Ragonese. And in his expert opinion, having faced both Beast One (Gurenlian) and Beast Two (Baptiste) over the years, what does he see?

“Really, you’re looking at a student and teacher,” he says, “and they’re kind of evening out.”

Perhaps nothing more could support that opinion than this fact: This summer, both Baptiste and Gurenlian, one at the start of a pro and international career and the other winding his down, will suit up for Team USA at the 2018 Federation of International World Championship in Israel. It will mark not only a journey for a gold medal, of course, but also a symbolic passing of the torch from Gurenlian, already retired after 12 MLL seasons as the league’s career and single-season faceoff wins and ground balls leader and likely playing his last games for the U.S., to Baptiste, the affable recent college graduate who is finishing a dominant four-year college run at Denver, winning one national title, and more than 1,000 faceoffs at an astonishing 70-percent rate.

Crouched like one part sprinter in the starting blocks, one part wrestler and one part catcher, the 5-foot-10, 230-pound Baptiste holds his right, gloved hand near the throat of his stick, punches on top of the ball and uses the momentum of the action to propel himself to both feet. 

“We call it a pro hop,” says Gurenlian, a two-time Team USA member. “In that split second, it’s essentially the equivalent of the triple-threat position in basketball. As soon as he steps to his feet, based on wherever his opponent steps, he makes his decision on where to exit.”

If his opponent’s momentum goes forward, upfield Baptiste goes, maybe even starting a fast break. If his opponent tries a throwback standup move against him, the approach du jour after Maryland’s Jon Garino used it with relative success (3-for-6) against Baptiste in last year’s NCAA semifinals, Baptiste takes a drop step back to safety, often with the ball.

“That’s something he’s really told me that is important,” Baptiste says, “because a lot of the times with my opponents like to stand up, they try to force me one way and trap me to one area of the field.”

If, when he maneuvers out correctly, Baptiste looks a lot like Gurenlian, that’s for good reason. Gurenlian, Ragonese and another former pro, Chris Mattes, are founding members of the pervasive instructional operation, The Faceoff Academy, with which Baptiste has trained since his junior year at Morristown-Beard (N.J.) High School. That’s back when Baptiste was more adept at swimming — he qualified for the Junior Olympics, hence his nickname, “King Tuna” — than squatting to face off. 

“Man, this guy has potential,” Gurenlian said when he first saw Baptiste on the field during a clinic for Building Blocks Lacrosse club, based in Madison, N.J. “He was raw, but he was built for this position. And he was a sponge. Anything you told him, he tried it.”

Baptiste was a short and stout kid who had another nickname, “The Bus,” as a youth football fullback because of his propensity to barrel over would-be tacklers, according to his father, Leon, who played football at Cheney State. Mattes, the former Rutgers faceoff man who played five MLL seasons and now works as a coaching assistant with the NFL’s New England Patriots, worked extensively with Baptiste first, then Ragonese, a three-year MLL vet, and Gurenlian did, too. Baptiste absorbed different knowledge from each.

Two years later, late in Baptiste’s senior year of high school, when then-Denver assistant Dylan Sheridan called looking for a faceoff guy who could matriculate to DU and help them win their first national title, there was one name at the top of the list, though at the time he was lightly recruited and headed to Division III Franklin & Marshall, by no fault of his skills.

“He’s got what we call the Touch of God,” Ragonese, who as recently as this winter took faceoffs with Baptiste for one to two hours every other day for a month, said of the kid then. “When you have a character in Madden where you can jack up his stats to 99, that’s him. He’s got the hand speed, but he can run away from you. He’s good on a knee; he’s good standing. He can play offense and play defense. He’s scored more goals than a lot of second-line midfielders. There’s nothing you can train for to beat him. He’s got it. You see it maybe once every decade.”

It’s funny Ragonese should mention decade, because more than 10 years separate Gurenlian, who has become the face of his position over the past well, half-decade, and Baptiste, who’s done the same over the same period of time at the college level. Here’s some perspective: At a Team USA tryout event at US Lacrosse headquarters in Sparks, Md., last summer, the 2003 song “Hey Ya!” by OutKast blared from the Tierney Field speakers.

“I remember listening to this song in college,” said Gurenlian, a 2006 Penn State graduate.

“I was in third grade when this song came out,” Baptiste replied. “I was watching it on Nickelodeon.”

But at the end of the day, Baptiste says now, “We were both jamming out to it. That’s all that matters.”

They’ll probably be roommates in the Middle East — one the only Class of 2018 kid on the team who typically wears a smile on his face and is constantly joking, and the other a grizzled veteran who’s been through knee and shoulder injuries and can, self-admittedly, be a bit too intense in competitive situations.

“I’m most excited for that dynamic when we’re on the road,” Gurenlian says, “just being around each other and joking and laughing about stuff like that.”

The video review sessions that the pair has often engaged in by phone or computer, or the game-day text reminders (“You gotta keep your left hand on the ground”), can now be done and said in person. And during down time, while Baptiste might talk to his parents, Gurenlian might FaceTime his wife, Jenny, and son, Jackson. They are the reason he retired from MLL to have weekends off and consolidate his time away into one month during preparation for and competition in the two-week world championship in July.

PHOTOS BY MATT FURMAN, MARC PISCOTTY AND JOHN STROHSACKER

In another bedroom and down the sideline in the Mediterranean resort city of Netanya could be a similar faceoff combination in Canada’s veteran Geoff Snider and Jake Withers, who graduated from Ohio State in 2017 as that program’s leader in faceoff wins, key foils of Team USA’s gold medal hopes.

“Veterans and young bucks,” Baptiste said. “I didn’t even think about that.”

Well, Gurenlian has.

“Me and Geoff have a ton of respect for each other, and then you have the next two guys who most likely will be having more international wars for years to come,” Gurenlian says. “I don’t know if anything like this has ever happened at his level before.” 

What’s more, Withers is another former Faceoff Academy student (all but two of last year’s NCAA tournament teams had at least one), and is now a coach in the program and part of its group text like everyone else. (Expect Baptiste to officially join FOA as a coach as well this summer.) And while everyone’s friendly and cordial, even those that ask Gurenlian when they can expect paychecks for teaching a recent camp, certain lines can’t be crossed in a competition year. For instance, Withers asked if he could get a resistance training band, the Rapid Explosion Performance Strap, that FOA designed to improve faceoff specialists’ speed and strength. It has sold more 400 units.

“After July,” Gurenlian replied. “I’m not going to help anyone beat Trevor until after world games.”

There’s the physical and the technical prowess, and Baptiste certainly has those attributes. He can be one part grinder (getting lower than most opponents like Ragonese preaches), one part speedster (getting in and out of moves quicker than most like Mattes was known for) and one part tank that’s nimble enough to adjust on the fly (much like the 6-foot-1, 225-pound Gurenlian).

But then there’s the unseen mental game.

“The thing I’m most proud of is I understand fully, playing the MLL, what it’s like to have everyone watch our games and lose their minds if you don’t go 80 percent, and talk about it for a week,” Gurenlian says. “[Trevor’s] taken that for four straight years. He’s expected to win every faceoff, and he continues to improve. People have no idea how much harder it is to be on top and stay there than it is to have the drive to get there. That’s just the way we are. It’s like playing against LeBron. You’re getting everybody’s best effort all the time.”

So when the throwback standup stance became the antidote of choice against Baptiste earlier this NCAA season, he was prepared, having worked on combating it with a standup game of his own.

“Now in fact, he’s doing it himself just to get the ball out faster,” Ragonese says. “He said, ‘I don’t have to get beat up every single draw if I’m faster and I can just knock the ball away.’ That’s his most recent addition.”

And that was Gurenlian’s specialty.

“C’mon, man, that’s all I had on him,” he told Ragonese after learning he had showed Baptiste the ropes. “Why do you need to give that kid everything? Like he needs any more help.” 

The student is indeed morphing into the master. It just might be time to take a few reps.