Weekly Cover: Seth Tierney's Rise to the Pinnacle of Coaching

Seth Tierney never felt entitled to this position. That’s what made him perfect for it.

On April 12, 2024, USA Lacrosse introduced Tierney as the 14th head coach in U.S. Men’s National Team history. He spent the previous decade helping steer the program to two world championships as a fixture on John Danowski’s staff.

The time had come for the servant leader to serve by leading from the front of the room.

“It means the world to me,” Tierney said Friday before his first training camp at the helm. “I’ll look you dead in eye: I never once as an assistant for Team USA thought I was going to be the head coach. Not one day. I didn’t know I was on a job interview the last 10 years.”

Hours later, Tierney would address 42 of the nation’s top players — most of them pros in the Premier Lacrosse League, for which the Hofstra head coach also serves as head of competition — with similar notes of gratitude and gravitas.

“I’m all sorts of fired up to be in this room with you guys,” he said in his opening remarks to the team at the Embassy Suites in Hunt Valley, Md. “Some of you know me [from the PLL]. That stays there. This is a whole new experience. I can’t wait to coach you. I’m feeling an unbelievable amount of gratitude, excitement, humbled and certainly focused. Because this is a big task.”

After asking JT Giles-Harris, TD Ierlan, Ryan Terefenko and Brennan O’Neill to speak about their experiences with the gold medal-winning 2023 U.S. team and Brad Smith about his time with the training team that ended just shy of an invitation to San Diego, Tierney concluded the meeting with a guarantee.

“The one thing I can promise you is I do not have any agenda,” Tierney added. “The staff is here to pick 22 guys — whether they played on the last team or didn’t — who are going to mesh, have an unbelievable compete level and embrace this process. Because all eyes are going to be on us in Tokyo 2027.”

Tierney’s first camp felt very Danowskian. He invited vulnerability and encouraged the players to think team over tryout. He tossed a football with Mason Loehr, the 6-year-old son of USA Lacrosse athletic trainer Kellie Loehr, and issued a stern pre-scrimmage warning to Patrick Warne, the 9-year-old son of defensive coordinator Kevin Warne.

“You working the clock? I like to yell at the guy working the clock.”

With his sharp sense of humor and deadpan delivery, Tierney can cut you down to size with a quip and build you back up with a compliment. He uses levity as a device, mimicking Blaze Riorden’s hamstring scoops or noting the white hair of several sideline observers.

“I’m asking you to be you,” he told the players. “I’m also asking for you to allow us to be us.”

Tierney started on this path 30 years ago thanks to Danowski, who saw the makings of a coach in a barkeep who moonlit as a professional lacrosse player earning $124.90 per game after taxes. Danowski was at an engagement party at The Crease, a lacrosse-themed restaurant in Merrick, N.Y., when he offered Tierney a spot on his staff at Hofstra.

“Seth was built on running a business when I met him,” Danowski said. “You do everything. You learn from top to bottom. You’ve got to order supplies, you’ve got to manage personnel, you’ve got customer relations — there are 25 facets of things that you do when you’re the boss because the bottom line falls on you. People are going to respond to you.”

“There were practices at 6 o’clock in the morning, and the bar closed at 4,” Tierney said during an interview with the 2018 U.S. coaching staff in Israel. “You slept in your car for 45 minutes, and you went through practice. Then you went to the diner. That was my introduction to coaching.”

Tierney spent five years as Danowski’s assistant coach at Hofstra before leaving for his alma mater, Johns Hopkins, when former Blue Jays teammate Dave Pietramala took the reins there at the turn of the millennium. He was the offensive coordinator when Hopkins went undefeated and won the national championship in 2005. Tierney returned to Hofstra when Danowski left to become the head coach at Duke after the 2006 season. He’s entering his 20th season as the head coach of the Pride.

Danowski and Tierney call themselves, proudly, Turnpike Guys — an unofficial fraternity of lacrosse coaches and players who came of age at the university situated on Hempstead Turnpike, a heavily trafficked sliver of New York State Route 24 in Nassau County. The group includes Navy head coach and former U.S. assistant Joe Amplo and Warne, Amplo’s college roommate at Hofstra and now the head coach at Georgetown.

“The turnpike concept was born out of that we weren’t the bluebloods of lacrosse, but we’ll scrap with you,” Danowski said. “You don’t need wooden lockers to compete in a lacrosse game. You don’t need chartered airplane trips. You just need a bunch of guys who love each other and love playing the game.”

The son of a New York City firefighter and the nephew of the lacrosse legend after whom USA Lacrosse’s William G. Tierney Field is named, Tierney never waned in his work ethic as he waxed in his knowledge of the sport. During his 10 years as a U.S. assistant, you would be just as likely to find him with a broom in his hand sweeping out the locker room as you would a whiteboard mapping out a zone offense.

And always seeking to make meaningful connections with the athletes.

Bobby Benson experienced that firsthand at Hopkins, where Tierney’s office was a converted coat closet next to the visitor’s locker room in the Goldfarb Gymnasium. A three-time All-American attackman for the Blue Jays and member of the 2002 U.S. Men’s National Team comprised almost entirely of college players, Benson craved the tactical know-how that would allow him to become one of the best off-ball finishers in the game.

“Seth’s the ultimate professional,” said Benson, now the head coach at Providence and offensive coordinator for the U.S. team. “He’s had tremendous success everywhere he’s gone. He was a great mentor.”

Like Danowski, Tierney assembled a U.S. coaching staff with continuity and built-in chemistry. He retained Charley Toomey as a goalie coach and defensive assistant and brought on Benson and Warne, both of whom played for him in college and coached together for a season under Don Zimmerman at UMBC. Benson also spent time on Toomey’s staff at Loyola.

“Coach T is a great people person,” Warne said. “He has unbelievable relationships with guys. Using humor, maybe a little sarcasm, but being able to flip the switch. That’s one of his greatest strengths. It’ll be like I’m walking on the practice field at Hofstra. He’s very genuine. He’s very truthful.”

Rival coaches in the Big East with very different personalities, Benson and Warne often sought out Tierney during their first U.S. training camp to justify their observations of players’ strengths and weaknesses.

“I’m interested to see them both adjust because they are at opposite ends of the spectrum,” Tierney said. “Bobby is usually a little quieter. He’s a rainy day. Every day stinks to Bobby. Nothing is good, even if you score the perfect goal. Kevin will celebrate a good hot dog. We’ll see how we meet in the middle.”

Tierney admitted it’s strange not being directly in the offensive huddle now commanded by Benson and assuming a more supervisory role. When John Tillman took his first head coaching job at Harvard in 2007, it was Tierney who prepared him for the challenges you seldom encounter as an assistant.

“Your head’s going to be spinning for a couple years,” Tillman said, summarizing the conversation. “Everybody goes through it. It’s natural.”

Now Tierney must follow his own advice as he navigates the U.S. team toward the 2027 World Lacrosse Men’s Championship in Japan. International rules have changed — there’s an 80-second shot clock and 22-player roster cap — but the imperative remains the same. The United States has won the gold medal in 11 of 14 world championships dating back to 1967.

Which was why Tierney braced for bad news when he received the call from Darren Lowe, chair of the high performance and national teams committee at USA Lacrosse. He called it an Armageddon moment, the white flash that triggers a lifetime of memories recalled in a single instant. Sitting in the front seat of the Hofstra team bus on the way to Delaware when Lowe informed him he got the job, Tierney could not help but think of those who came before him and the first time he set foot on the USA sideline more than 10 years ago.

“You’re just like the players. You get this backpack full of clothes, you start putting it on and it just feels different,” Tierney said. “When you put it on with those three letters — what it represents, the people who are behind you — every shirt, every quarter zip just feels different.”

For Tierney, it’s the perfect fit.

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