From Player to Coach, Christian Mazzone Has Seen It All

Christian Mazzone, a former professional lacrosse player, had an amazing career before coming to Eastside Catholic to coach. He played D1 lacrosse at Rutgers before being taken as the No. 22 selection in the Major League Lacrosse draft, and eventually finding his way to the Pro Lacrosse League in 2020. Along with heading up the Crusader lacrosse program, Mazzone also coaches with Legit Lacrosse. With all this experience Mazzone brings to the table, it’s fair to ask how did he get here, and what has pushed him to make his career what it is today?

He started his career where he grew up, in Long Island, NY. From an early age, he was exposed to high levels of the sport. He watched his oldest brother, who is 10 years older than him, play in college games. Mazzone then went on to play in at Ward Melville High School — then, a nationally ranked program. And coming from a lacrosse family, he was always pushed to be his best by his brothers as they all practiced in their backyard for countless hours.

However, it was not his family that was his biggest mentor in his youth. Instead, Mazzone highlighted his friends as being instrumental in his improvement as a player.

When I asked him who was his biggest mentor thinking it would be his dad or one of his older brothers, he keenly replied, “It was actually my friends. We stayed together throughout high school, college, and really all of our sports. Not just lacrosse we played basketball, we played soccer together, we were a really tight-knit group. And it’s funny saying your peers are your mentors, but our swagger really rubbed off on each other, and it gave everyone the confidence and the push to be better.”

Now lacrosse is a sport that you can go far with pure athleticism, but how athletic-based is it compared to other sports?

The thing about lacrosse though, Mazzone said, is that “You can be anyone of all shapes and sizes because it comes down to the skill of the stick. I’m 5’8”, 165 pounds, and I was effective on the field, one of my brothers was even smaller and still was effective, and another one of my brothers was 6’1” tall, lanky kid with a decent amount of weight on him. The time you put in with the stick is the real equalizer, and that’s what you see in 6^th, 7^th, 8^th grade because the best player is usually the one with the best skill, but if they don’t put in the time they get surpassed by people who put in the effort. What I experienced firsthand was that when I put in the time into my craft, the confidence really got put in and really pushed me to be a top tier player.”

Effort is the biggest variable over skill, but adaptability is also crucial. Being able to change your game and being versatile and flexible as a player is critical for success. When Mazzone entered the PLL, Tom Schreiber, a well-known pro player, was Mazzone’s teammate.

Mazzone emphasized that he had to know his role when playing with a star like Schreiber. “Say in basketball if you’re in college and you’re a 30-point scorer and you go into the NBA and you’re playing with LeBron James, you’re not going to get enough touches to play as a 30-point scorer. You have to adjust your game to be effective because he’s going to get all the touches. So that’s how I thought about it with Tom Schreiber, he’s the guy that’s gonna get the ball, so I have to get him the ball, play off of him, and be in good spots to help him be the most of effective. Not only in the PLL, but in other leagues, people flame out because they’ve always been the #1 option, and once they’re not, they don’t have another trick or skill to be effective.”

Playing at the top levels of any sport takes incredible skill and knowledge, but there can be roadblocks along the way that no person can be prepared for until they face it. For this reason, perseverance is also critical in success at the highest levels of competition. While the PLL was the highest level he played at, Mazzone actually found college to be a more challenging roadblock and adjustment for him than adjusting to the PLL.

“The biggest roadblock was when I got injured in college because it took me a good year or two to get over it mentally. It’s also a big jump from high school to college in terms of the responsibility of it all. In high school, you can be skilled and put in a little bit of work and still be effective. But in college, if you’re not putting in the work you’ll get passed by, and it was a shellshock for me, and that’s what made the player I am today. It’s because I developed that mindset that made it easy to transition into the PLL.”

Nowadays, he coaches EC’s team, but during the offseason he also runs the team Legit Lacrosse. It was built upon five pillars, Family, Community, Integrity, Learning, and Excellence, but how did these be chosen to be the heart of his team?

Mazzone said, “These pillars are pieces in your life, but how they came to be because they were the pillars of the Head Coach of Legit, Chris Ledgerwood’s, college team, Stevenson University. We preach on this because the first four pillars correlate together and lead to the final pillar in terms of excellence. If you are striving for excellence, you have to have all the other four pillars to get there because it’s not magically going to happen. And you need everyone to pitch in. That’s why family and community come first because those are the foundations. You can’t be a great lacrosse team off of one or two players. You have to trust your team.”

Mazzone and Ledgerwood also considered additional values beyond just keeping the college virtues. “A big one for me was accountability similar to integrity. It was something at Rutgers because when I first got there the program was not a good program and there was no accountability, but when that changed and people wanted it to become a great program both peer and self-accountability became very important, pushing each other, taking care of academics. And once it starts going, it pushes itself and keeps on going as players start putting in work on their own, and you see all the work pay off. It’s not all going to happen in one week, but if you keep putting in the effort for two, three months, then you’ll start to see the change.”

So he is living his life fully immersed in lacrosse and never letting off the gas. It’s amazing how far he’s come and what he’s done to create such a well-knit community not only at EC, but in his own team as well. He has had the firsthand experience in knowing where every player he’s coaching has been through, and puts his experience into the team to make it the true future of lacrosse, and the team is working hard to live up to that expectation and shatter it.