As much as having a player with six seasons of experience is an asset, teammates still find a way to have a little fun with their elders. What’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity without a few jokes?
Perkins experienced a phenomenon he expected to encounter in 2019 while playing at Utah. In the handshake line after a win over Detroit Mercy — amid the chorus of ‘good game’ he heard, ‘Hey, Coach!’”
“I was like, ‘What?’ I had to do a double-take,” Perkins said.
As he turned, he saw Jake Freedlander, a freshman for Detroit Mercy. Perkins, then a freshman at Robert Morris, had coached Freedlander when he was in middle school at Quaker Valley (Pa.).
The moment was one his teammates certainly didn’t let him live down.
“I was like, ‘Holy cow, these kids are already in college? I’m getting old.’” Perkins said.
The two-year leader for a new Utah men’s lacrosse program dropped 52 points in 2019 and 2020 combined. He earned his Master’s in Commercial Real Estate while in Salt Lake City — the program for which he decided to leave his hometown in 2018.
Once he completed his courses in May, Perkins started to look to his future. His job prospects in the Salt Lake area were not materializing as he had hoped due to the pandemic, so he decided to head back home.
He moved back into his parents’ home, just a seven-minute drive from the campus of Robert Morris. His parents, Joe and Lori, were certainly happy to have their son back. While he pondered whether he wanted to pursue Major League Lacrosse, Perkins and his father hit the golf course to pass the time.
“He’s pretty good,” Joe Perkins said of his son. “He hits the ball a mile. I jump out of my shoes when he hits it.”
Eventually, he elected to pursue the seventh year in college lacrosse and an MBA — hoping to accomplish both where it all started. He entered the transfer portal and reached out to McMinn, the coach that gave him his only Division I opportunity in 2015.
“We just told him we’d do whatever we could and would love to have him back and we’d support him with every decision he makes,” said McMinn, who couldn’t maintain a consistent relationship with Perkins while he was at Utah as a result of NCAA restrictions.
“Most people that leave a program, there might be a little bad taste on either side. For us and Jimmy, it was never like that. Originally, I just wanted to re-establish the relationship. I didn’t think it was going to the extent of you coming back to play for us.”
Perkins decided over the summer to return to the program he had grown up watching — just a short ride down the hill on his parents’ street, across the Sewickley Bridge and up University Boulevard.
Unlike many transfers, the former Colonials’ star that led the program to its first NCAA tournament in 2018 has assimilated nicely. McMinn said that while he may be 24, it’s hard to tell at times.
“The running joke is that he still looks like he’s a freshman when he comes back,” McMinn joked. “As old as he is on the team, he still looks like he could be 18.”