In 1998 I began life as a freshman at Tufts. 

I was a 6’2’’ 180 pound, dual-sport athlete, I played both football and lacrosse.  Football was my mainstay.   

I had yet to fall fully in love with lacrosse—this would come later. 

When I arrived, the Tufts lacrosse team’s record was in the cellar…to be fully accurate it was in the sub-basement.  The glory that was Tufts lacrosse at the time had sported a combined record of 3 wins and 25 losses the prior two seasons before the 1999 season.  The 1999 season was my first year–which happened also to be the first year of Mike Daly as the new head coach. 

We were simply the laughingstock of the league to be frank.  The returning players were dejected and had low expectations for both the upcoming 1999 season and the future of Tufts Lacrosse as a whole.  Why wouldn’t they?  There was little to no pride involved in getting routinely shellacked by everyone and their mother. 

Not fun.  

Enter Coach Daly. 

Coach Daly replaced the previous head coach who had abandoned the Tufts Lacross program like the Titanic two months before our season was scheduled to begin.  Tufts had scrambled and come up with Coach Daly, a 24-year-old assistant football coach.

Coach Daly had never played lacrosse in his life… (yes, you read that correctly). 

A man high in character, integrity and work ethic who lacked personal experience in the sport. 

With exactly zero personal experience as a player, he was viewed as a temporary solution and filler by many. 

This did not lend confidence to the situation.   

Coach Daly had other plans though and he never looked back once given the opportunity.   

I vividly remember walking in and seeing the team schedule for the year posted in the locker room.  For some reason the NCAA championship dates had been prominently marked. 

At the time most thought this was laughable considering the context.  

Yet there it was.  Coach Daly had posted the team’s yearly schedule in our locker room with the date of the NCAA championship game emphasized–announcing this as the goal for the team and a pledge to get us there.   

This was utterly outlandish when one considers we were far from even qualifying for our league’s playoffs, let alone the NCAA tournament.   

It seemed like dreamland material.  A very distant and borderline unreal mountain that might never be attained for the Tufts Lacrosse program within our lifetimes, much less our playing careers. 

But Daly did not care.   

And thus, neither did we.   

I was just wrapping up my first football season with Daly as my positional coach (he had previously played Football & Baseball at Tufts).   

I personally respected and believed in him.   

I had been recruited for football and had not begun playing lacrosse until midway through high school.  At Tufts, lacrosse became my favorite sport because of Daly and the transformation he elicited and inspired, both in myself and the program as a whole. 

This was me at the time. 

https://ase.tufts.edu/athletics/old/MenLacrosse/profiles/2001/supple.html

I was a 6’2’’ human energy drink.  An abundance of dynamic energy and drive badly in need of a channel and a target I could hit. 

As a Freshman I started.  By today’s standards I had no place on the field, but I was football player on a lacrosse field and excelled at the contact nature of the sport.  Both sports had pads and a helmet, and I liked the parallels.   Until I filled my shortcomings in technical fundamentals with extra time both on the wall (throwing a lacrosse ball against a wall) and on the field, I made up for it by getting the hell after it.  

But like the program, I had some growing up to do.   

For our Spring break we’d always converge in Florida with a bunch of other teams for the start of our season.  My freshman year this trip fell on St Patrick’s Day, and I decided it would be a good idea to honor my Irish heritage by partying all night–I’d get to sleep later on the bus ride—an idea which seemed perfectly sensible to my freshman self.   I did not make it and was woken with cold water being thrown on my face and being ushered to the bus with my entire team waiting for me.  

I followed that up with an encore performance my freshman year by getting jumped in the street by a bunch of “townies” when I should have been in bed, resting for an upcoming game. Having a head too swollen to fit into a helmet for our upcoming game, I told coach Daly I was on my way to the library to study when it happened.  Right… 

Needless to say, Coach Daly did not need to be Sherlock Holmes to uncover the truth.  

There were other similar incidents now that I recall and by all rights I should of been kicked off the team.   

But instead of giving up on me, Daly did the opposite.  He took me under his wing and was unreasonable and firm–with real communication and respect which I reciprocated and was extremely grateful for.  He helped change my life.

He had raised me up a point where I could see that it was not good enough to just give my all on the field–these uncompromising standards transcended to life.     

Lacrosse.  Mindset.  Discipline.  Goals.  

Coach Daly personally shifted the bar from below rock bottom to top of the very top of the mountain and simply would not compromise.   I consider this an incredible example of an individual leader maintaining and projecting his viewpoint and goals into a group. 

My past teammates and I reminisced this last weekend on the values instilled in us by Coach Daly and how these have transcended lacrosse and carried forward into our daily lives, families and careers.

He was our Maximus standing alone in the Coliseum mid the carnage of the Tufts Lacrosse program–seeing potential ability in his players and projecting future glory into the environment. 

He could see it.  And gradually we could as well. 

He did the work, and we followed his lead.  

And the results were unbelievable and profound.  Many of the lessons I learned from Coach Daly have stuck with me and helped me throughout my life, both personally and professionally. Showing patriotism proudly on NEDC’s gear is just one example of how he has inspired me.

Coach Daly lit a fire in Tufts Lacrosse that captured the attention of the nation. 

Daly went on to win 7 league championships, play for 5 national championships and win 3 of them to complete the Tufts Lacrosse transformation and make good on his promise.  An absolute epic turnaround story of the ages which has been documented in the book Team Turnarounds. 

I think this article gives a pretty solid account of him. 

https://www.usalaxmagazine.com/college/men/meet-mike-daly-the-coach-who-never-played-lacrosse 

I was honored to co-captain the Tufts Lacrosse Team in my junior and senior years when we were upsetting contenders and competing in the playoffs. 

Tufts is now a perennial top 5 team in the nation and just returned to the championship game this past week, which I attended with my 9 year old son.   

The current coach, Casey Dannolfo, is a past Daly player and carries the legacy on today with both pride and grit.  While we did not come away victorious this past week there is no doubt we will be back soon–that standard is no longer in question.   

The legacy will always start with one guy making the decision to reach the top and not caring if that was realistic or waiting for others to agree with him.  This catalyzed us as players and as people–a group of ‘nobodies from nowhere’ going about ‘putting the fear of god’ into opponents and doing whatever it took to ‘leave it better than they found it.’  (These Coach Dalyisms still resonate with me today). 

I am so proud to be a part of that legacy and fortunate for the opportunity to have played a part in the transformation of this program. 

This is the kind of coach that is one in a million.  

A teacher, a leader and a friend whose legacy will continue to ripple down the generations. 

Thank you coach Daly. 

We are forever grateful. 

With Love, 

David Muniz Supple 

#13 Tufts Lacrosse.  Co-Captain 

Tufts Architectural Studies 2002 

Founder|CEO NEDC Boston 

References:

https://www.usalaxmagazine.com/college/men/meet-mike-daly-the-coach-who-never-played-lacrosse 

https://ase.tufts.edu/athletics/old/MenLacrosse/profiles/2001/supple.html 

https://ase.tufts.edu/athletics/old/MenLacrosse/archives/roster2002.htm 

https://now.tufts.edu/2016/08/15/casey-dannolfo-a06-named-mens-lacrosse-coach