Ernestine Warner first learned about the finalists for the George Boiardi Hard Hat Award like most fans of the Premier Lacrosse League. She was scanning Instagram. The difference is her son was one of the nominees. 

This wasn’t the first time an accomplishment slipped her middle child’s mind. Tyler Warner already has the bedside manner of a veteran surgeon. He’s also quick to downplay his achievements. In an email response to an interview request for this story, Warner described himself as “one of the least interesting dudes in the sport.”

“Sometimes I think he is humble to a fault,” says Mark Warner, Tyler’s father, a health-care administrator.

That might sound disorienting if you watched Warner on Saturdays this summer for the PLL champion Whipsnakes or during Yale’s NCAA title run in 2018.

“When you talk to him, he's quiet and pretty understated, but he is a competitor,” says Jim Stagnitta, the head coach of Whipsnakes LC. “When he's on the field, he's as tough as anyone I've been around. Ever.”

Most highlights in the PLL’s Top 50 Player rankings feature diving goals and outlandish assists. Warner’s clip is the opposite of flashy. Atlas midfielder Joel Tinney tries to back him down. Warner stands his ground. He keeps applying pressure, then manhandles Tinney to the turf. 

“That’s one of the things I like about the PLL,” Warner says. “You can kind of get away with being a little extra physical, which is fun for the short sticks like myself.”

If you’re not watching closely, you might not notice Warner at all. It’s almost a guarantee given his position. If his name is never mentioned during a broadcast, he played great. Though their abbreviation is the longest, short stick defensive midfielders (SSDM) often get the shortest amount of recognition.

“Obviously they don't get too much love, but they're kind of like a cornerback in football,” says Whipsnakes captain and long-stick midfielder Michael Ehrhardt, who calls Warner a “silent assassin.” “Those are some of the best athletes on the field. They're getting dodged all the time, nonstop.”

Warner will reunite with several of his fellow Whipsnakes — including Ehrhardt, the MVP of the 2018 World Championship — in San Antonio this weekend for the Spring Premiere. Warner is one of 11 players making their U.S. senior team debuts. 

Out of the six Whipsnakes on the U.S. roster, five primarily play on the defensive end. 

It wasn’t always that way for Warner. At Baldwin High School on Long Island, he was the one initiating dodges. His highlight reel from his senior year is a string of textbook on-the-run and time-and-room shots. When he needed a breather, he played attack. 

An errant pass during an early-fall scrimmage in his freshman year at Yale altered his path.

“When I was switched to d-middie I remember being pissed at first,” Warner says. “But I also knew that it was a way for me to play, and if I was going to play that position for the rest of my career, I was going to try to be damn good at it.” 

Warner embraced the new challenge. If he couldn’t score goals, then he’d make it his mission to deny them. He takes matchups personally. Dodges are an insult. He dissects game film on every potential opponent, so he already knows how they’ll try to get by him. They rarely do. 

“I can't think of a short stick d-middie I've had who was a better shut-down, take-his-man-out-of-the-game than he is,” Stagnitta says.

Stagnitta had such confidence in Warner’s cover capabilities that he’d often match him against attackmen. He considers Warner almost like a long pole. 

Warner’s objective isn’t just to guard his mark; it’s to erase him. Duke freshman midfielder Nakeie Montgomery had eight goals in three games during the NCAA tournament before squaring off against the Elis at Gillette Stadium.  

The Yale coaching staff hadn’t watched Duke until the final four. 

“Luckily,” thought Andrew Baxter, Yale’s defensive coordinator, “We have Tyler.” 

Montgomery didn’t score in the championship game. He didn’t even take a shot. Yale prevailed 13-11 and claimed its first national title since 1883.

“His confidence and his beliefs in the team were a huge part of our success that year,” says Baxter, now the head coach at Fairfield. “Guys fed off him every day in practice and in the games. He didn't fear anyone or any team.”

"I play with that chip that if you're actually stupid enough to dodge me, it serves you right when you can't get by me,” Warner says. “That's always my mentality.” 

That chip was grew bigger thanks to the PLL’s player rankings. Warner was 39th.

“I definitely think Ty should have been a lot higher, but I just think that comes with time though, especially in our sport.” Ehrhardt says. “If not the best d-middie right now, then he's definitely in the top two or three in the whole world.”

Ehrhardt’s initial questions about his team’s short sticks were answered on June 1 at Gillette Stadium during Whipsnakes’ first game against Chaos. He watched Warner stand up Eric Scott, knock him off his feet, then clear the ball.

“Ty Warner is in the house, and he is all business,” Ehrhardt thought. 

June 1 was also the estimated start date of the Lipogems Prospective Study at The Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. The official title is “Adipose Derived Stromal Cell Transplantation as an Adjunct to Arthroscopy in Treatment of Effusion Synovitis of the Early Degenerative Knee.”

One of the two contacts listed is Dr. Riley J. Williams III, an orthopedic surgeon at HSS who’s the medical director for the Brooklyn Nets and a team physician for USA Basketball. The other contact is Tyler Warner.

***

Warner’s interest in medicine took root at about the same time he first picked up a lacrosse stick in the fourth grade.

“I think he wanted to be a fireman first, but it quickly became he wanted to be a doctor and stuck with it,” Ernestine Warner, a residential mortgage consultant, says.

Warner had watched family members “struggle tremendously” with their health but only sought out medical help once it was too late. His pediatrician, Dr. Greta Rainsford, dispelled his fears. At her office in Hempstead, where she’s practiced for 55 years, Rainsford seemed to know all the answers and exactly which treatment would help him feel better. He realized he wanted to have a similar impact on others.

That ambition kept him going despite a mountain of coursework at Yale where he was an ecology and evolutionary biology major on a pre-med track.

“He had one of most intense workloads between lacrosse and schoolwork that you can ever imagine,” says Jerry O’Connor, who started at defense on the 2018 national championship team.

This is coming from an Investment Banking Analyst at Goldman Sachs who also studied at the London School of Economics. When O’Connor would search for an empty room in the basement of the Watson Center, it seemed like Ben Reeves, the 2018 Tewaaraton Award winner who was also pre-med, and Warner were always there. It was as if they had never left.

During their senior year, Warner and Reeves opted for an off-campus apartment instead of the “lacrosse house” like the majority of the seniors. 

“He was never reaching for the limelight,” O’Connor says of Warner. “He always worked quietly in the shadows.”

While most of Warner’s teammates and coaches describe him as quiet or reserved in conversation, he’s equally as vocal and passionate during play. Lacrosse offers a release. Anytime Warner made a takeaway in practice at Yale, he’d always shout the same thing. 

“Cookies!” 

He’d often collect the ground ball and head the other way before his teammates knew what happened. 

It’s the same fierceness his parents see when they play “Jeopardy!” The Warners keep score. 

“The most important thing during ‘Jeopardy!’ [to Tyler] is that Mark loses,” Ernestine says. “If anyone is going to win besides himself, it cannot be Mark.”

***

Although Warner and Reeves roomed together for only one week during this summer with the Whipsnakes, some things remained the same. 

“We used to give those guys a hard time,” Ehrhardt says. “Every single week they were walking around with their backpacks. They are obviously tremendous people off the field, too. It's a credit to them that they can play at such an elite level and in their free time when we're all relaxing, they're putting the work in on their medical school applications.”

“When he and Ben have conversations, it's like a different language,” Stagnitta says. “They're brilliant.”

To get to HSS, where he works as a research coordinator, Warner catches the 7:32 a.m. Long Island Railroad from Baldwin to Penn Station. If he’s needed early, he’ll get the 5:30 train. He takes the Q train from Herald Square to 72nd Street, then has a 10-minute walk to the hospital. 

“It's not the best, but it's definitely not the worst I've heard of,” Warner says of the commute from his parents’ house that stretches well over an hour each way. “It's doable.”

Once or twice a week after work, he tutors high school students at Frederick Douglass Academy through Harlem Lacrosse. On weekends, he’ll borrow a friend’s ID so he can study at Hofstra or Adelphi. 

“He just seems to handle things,” Mark Warner says. “He just goes about his business and does what he has to do. He’s always prioritized well.”  

At Baldwin, Warner was the starting quarterback and an AP Scholar. At Yale, he was a second-team USILA All-America selection his senior year and a USILA Scholar All-American. He’s never been dissuaded from pursuing his passions.

Yet, the next step in Warner’s journey is less certain than his spot on a list of lacrosse’s top players. He applied to around 10 medical schools, including most of the Ivies. He’s already gotten into a “school,” which you later find out from his parents is the University of Rochester. He’ll find out from the rest in the next few months. 

“In an ideal world, I’ll be able to do both,” Warner says of lacrosse and med school, though he admits those prospects are unclear. 

“It seems to me he knows exactly where he is, who he is, and he has a good sense of where he wants to be,” Ernestine Warner says. “He’s probably not going to let anyone suggest to him that that's not going to happen."