EPISODE 34 | Joel White

beerleaguelive
May 23
6 min read

Updated: May 28

Joel White with headphones, at podcast mic

🎧 Listen to Episode 34 or watch:

https://www.beerleaguelive.com/LatestEpisodes

There's something Joel White says every time he puts a kid through a ground ball drill.

Not "pick it up." Not "what are you doing out there?"

Just this:

Get it to space.

After 14 years of professional lacrosse — two national championships at Syracuse, an NLL rookie year where he got punched in the head before anyone told him fighting was legal, a World Championship gold medal with Team USA, and a career spent leading the pro game in ground balls — that's still the first thing he teaches.

Because he knows how easy it is to make the simple thing hard.

👋 Meet the Guest

Joel White is the Director of Mad Dog Lacrosse Nashville — the Nashville Dogs.

He's a three-time All-American and two-time national champion at Syracuse University. He was the first long stick midfielder in history to win the nation's top midfielder award. He played 14 years professionally across the MLL, NLL, and PLL, earned All-Star honors, and won a World Championship gold medal with Team USA.

He moved to Nashville nine years ago with his wife and didn't know a soul. Now he's building the best lacrosse program in the region — one practice plan at a time.

Follow him @JWhite_11

🔢 The Number That Matters

Tennessee just became a sanctioned high school lacrosse state in 2025.

The inaugural state championship was held this spring. Ensworth won it.

850,000 kids are playing lacrosse across the country. Youth participation is up 27% since 2019. There are 113,000 boys and 102,000 girls playing high school lacrosse across 3,400 programs in 26 states.

Nashville is not a lacrosse backwater. It's an emerging market with real momentum — and Joel White got here before the wave.

🏆 The Walk-On Who Started Every Game

Joel grew up in Cortland, NY — 30 minutes from Syracuse — and picked up a lacrosse stick in middle school. No one pushed him into it. He just fell in love.

He played travel soccer growing up and thought he might go to England. Then lacrosse happened and he never looked back.

When Syracuse called, there was no scholarship offer. Just an open door. His mom — the primary caregiver, doing it on her own — sat with him and said yes anyway. Joel still talks about that decision with a weight that tells you he hasn't forgotten what it cost her.

He showed up on campus a preferred walk-on competing for a second midfield line spot. Freshman year, coaches handed him a six-foot pole and said: you're playing long stick now.

He had never touched one before in his life.

"I looked at the coach and said — whatever, if this is going to help the team, let's do it. Can I get my short stick back next year? He said yeah, no problem."

He never got it back. He started every game his freshman year and never looked back. That spring, Syracuse won a national championship.

🎯 The Comeback Nobody Saw Coming

Sophomore year. NCAA Championship. Syracuse vs. Cornell. They're the defending champs, they're a top seed, and they are getting absolutely throttled.

Down four or five goals with about three minutes left.

One of those goals is on Joel — a bad defensive breakdown, a guy rolling it under Galloway's stick. He turns to his roommate and best friend John Galloway in the goal and just... laughs.

Then he remembers they're losing and starts running.

What happens next is still one of the most insane finishes in college lacrosse history. A dive check by Kenny Nims with 26 seconds left. A scramble. A second check by Joel. Another scramble. A behind-the-back pass. And then Kenny Nims — the same guy who made the first check, who got up off the ground and sprinted to the crease — catches it and finishes with three seconds left.

Overtime. Syracuse wins.

"You got to get lucky. And then you got to make the play."

💰 The System Is a Business. Act Accordingly.

Joel isn't naive about what club lacrosse is.

He watches kids go to tournaments every weekend with no practice in between. He watches "exposure" get thrown around like it means something for a 10-year-old. He watches families pay for travel to Maryland five weekends a summer when the real work is wall ball in the driveway for 20 minutes a day.

He's watched private equity come knocking.

He talked to all of them. He walked away from the bigger money because what it looked like, in practice, was becoming an employee of a firm that owned a bunch of clubs and needed a face in Nashville.

"I'm not selling this to someone and thinking I'm going to sit there and collect. This is my name. This is my passion."

He partnered with Mad Dog because he couldn't find a single person in lacrosse willing to say a bad word about founders Tommy and Aiden. That's the whole interview process. In a sport this small, reputation travels.

🧠 What Separates the Kids Who Make It

Joel was an athletic kid who came to lacrosse late with raw stick skills. He knows exactly what it looks like to be behind.

He also knows what it looks like to close the gap.

"A kid in 6th grade who comes in with some athletic ability, picks up the stick, loves it, and has it in his hands for the next six months — he's going to pass half the kids who've been on the team for four years who don't do that."

The wall. Every single day. Not complicated.

He tells his players: give me 15 minutes of wall ball, three times a week. I promise you I'll see a difference in two to three weeks. And he can always tell who did it and who didn't.

What he's looking for beyond stick skills: anticipation. The ability to get the ball to space rather than fight for it in a scrum. The kid who understands that the ground ball isn't always won by the toughest player in the pile — it's won by the one who moved it to where there's no pile.

That's not athletic ability. That's game IQ. And that gets taught.

🎯 On Recruiting: What's Real and What Isn't

Tennessee sanctioning high school lacrosse changes things. For the first time, there's a state championship to play for, a defined pathway, and a reason for college coaches to start paying attention to what's happening south of the Mason-Dixon line.

But Joel is clear-eyed about the timeline.

"It doesn't really happen until 9th grade. You're looking at where you are, whether you're playing, do you like it. Those are the context clues."

And even then — D1 is the conversation for maybe 1% of the kids in any given program. The real question is what school fits: academically, geographically, culturally. He's seen Nashville kids get recruited to schools on Long Island who have never been there and have no idea what they're walking into.

Mad Dog Nashville now has a recruiting coordinator on staff — not an extra fee, included in the program — who runs individual calls with rising juniors, provides email templates, and maintains college relationships across every level.

Because if you're paying for a club, that's part of what you should be getting.

💬 The Most Important Question Every Season

Joel. His coaches. His entire program philosophy.

Same north star.

"If you're not having fun, you're not going to work hard at it. And if you don't work hard at it, none of the rest of this matters."

He's not building college lacrosse players. He's building kids who love the game. Some of them will play in college. Some won't. The ones who do it right will still have a stick in their hands at 40.

His son Macklin is 5. Joel saw him pick up a stick in the backyard a few nights ago and ask if he wanted to play catch.

"I couldn't get my stick and ball fast enough."

That's the goal. Not the scholarship. Not the banner. Not the ranking.

A kid who chose it.

🏁 The Rant

Box lacrosse goalies.

The Pillsbury Doughboy. The Michelin Man. A couch wrapped in bubble wrap. Duncan from a commercial.

Joel's counterpoint: one of the best goalies in the NLL is the most shredded human in the building. You just can't tell because he's wearing a mattress.

The debate continues. Somebody call the Rules Committee.