Lars Tiffany, the Virginia coach who won a national championship on Memorial Day, joins Paul Carcaterra for Season 2 Episode 7 of Overtime. Listen here.
Lars Tiffany is a free spirit. He admits he gets it from his mom. His name, though, is derived from a friend of his father's — a Swedish architect who traveled with the elder Tiffany.
Tiffany grew up in Upstate New York, helping his father on a Buffalo farm and eventually falling in love with the game of lacrosse, which was played at the nearby Onondaga reservation. That love for lacrosse took him to Lafayette High School, and then to Brown, where he played under legendary coach Dom Starsia.
His first college game? Ironically enough, it was a win over powerhouse Virginia. His final game? The last game featuring the Gait brothers at the Dome.
"That's a moment I'll never forget," Tiffany said. "Opening my career with a big win like that."
After Tiffany graduated from Brown, he found another passion in coaching. After coaching lacrosse in Monterrey, Calif. for four years, he got his college coaching start as an assistant on Jim Stagnitta's staff at Washington and Lee. There, he'd unload the Cisco food trucks early in the morning, just so he could get his breakfast for free. He did what he could to make money and continue coaching.
Not to mention, Stagnitta held him to a high standard.
"I can remember being in that dining hall eating for free because I've been opening up the truck, and crying because of what Jim Stagnitta had yelled at me that day," Tiffany said. "'I'm the lowest paid Ivy League graduate in the history of the Ivy League, and he just took the man-down from me because the man-down wasn't getting it done, and I'm eating free meals in Lexington, Virginia.'"
Tiffany tried for years to get back to Brown in a coaching capacity and finally got his break in 2006, when he accepted the head coaching position following a stint at Stony Brook. Ten years later, he led the Bears to the final four in Philadelphia, coming just short of a national championship game appearance with Tewaaraton winner Dylan Molloy.