Joe Amplo is living the lacrosse lifer’s fantasy these days.
Not only is he the men’s lacrosse head coach for Marquette University – a program on the rise in just its eighth year of existence with a 6-5 overall record (2-1 in the Big East Conference) this season – but he also served as an assistant coach on the U.S. men’s lacrosse team, which won the final game over Canada last August at the Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL) World Championships in Israel. He also has been tapped as an assistant for the 2022 national team, which will compete in the FIL tournament in British Columbia.
“It’s a dream job,” Amplo said of his post with the U.S. national team. “It’s cool that I had that opportunity and I can talk about it to people [in Wisconsin] and make the lacrosse world seem a little bit smaller to folks around here.”
Amplo served as an assistant in charge of defense under John Danowski, who coached Amplo at Hofstra and currently runs the Duke men’s lacrosse program.
“It’s about who you know in the world, and [John] is a good one to know,” Amplo said.
As Amplo quickly discovered, coaching professionals at the international level is completely different than running an NCAA Division 1 program. For starters, Amplo and his coaching colleagues only had seven interactions with the national team before a three-day training camp just one week before the start of the tournament. After that, the U.S. team came together for two weeks in Israel, where Amplo saw the players gel as a cohesive unit.
“That’s when we saw the growth of the team and the uniqueness of the experience was evident,” Amplo said. “I was curious to see if we could build a team that feels like a team compared to the college environment. Can this group of human beings that is great at the game fall in love with each other and become a team in that short amount of time?”
A 9-8 victory over Canada in the FIL championship game is proof it is possible. Amplo learned that time is irrelevant when players come together for a common goal – even when they’re the best in the world with the egos to match.
“What’s relevant is there has to be this reward at the end that everybody wants so badly, and there has to be clarity from whomever is in charge that this is who we’re going to be,” Amplo said. “These men didn’t care to be the superstar and didn’t care who got the credit — all they wanted to do was win.”
Even though Amplo now has international lacrosse experience on his resume, he is still keeping an eye on the Wisconsin scene. His elite travel club — Amplify Lacrosse — sponsors the Wisconsin Lacrosse Federation’s Boys High School Game of the Week, which gives Amplo a front-row view of the growth of the sport locally.
“The game is growing exponentially and the talent level is rising,” Amplo said. “This is now becoming an unbelievably fertile recruiting ground we have to look at. We should have at least one player each year that we should strongly consider or recruit from the state of Wisconsin.”
The Wisconsin lacrosse community reached a major milestone during Marquette’s recent scrimmage against powerhouse Maryland. At one point, the Golden Eagles featured three Wisconsin-based players – Logan Kreinz (Kettle Moraine), Jordan Schmid (Kettle Moraine) and Quintin Arnett (Arrowhead) – on the field at the same time.
“I turned to the bench and said, ‘There are three guys on the field from the state of Wisconsin playing against the University of Maryland on a lacrosse field,’” Amplo said. “That is remarkable.”
