Bill Belichick Loves…Lacrosse?

Late one night in May 2007, Northwestern women’s lacrosse coach Kelly Amonte Hiller begrudgingly fielded a phone call from an unfamiliar Massachusetts number. “I was recruiting a player from that area code and I was like, ‘Gosh, I don’t want to take this right now, but I need to talk to this kid,’” says Amonte Hiller. Instead, she was shocked to hear the gruff, instantly recognizable voice that greeted her. “I thought someone was messing with me,” she says. “But it was really him.”

Granted, this was exactly what Amonte Hiller had been hoping for when, earlier that day, with her Wildcats preparing to enter the ‘07 NCAA tournament as two-time defending champions, she had made the bold decision to randomly reach out to the one person she could think of, in any sport, who could relate to what she was going through. Still, even as her husband found the number for the New England Patriots’ headquarters through a Google search; even as she was patched through to the head coach’s assistant by a team receptionist; and even as she sputtered through a brief voicemail explaining her intentions, Amonte Hiller remained skeptical that she would ever actually talk to Bill Belichick.

“I said, ‘Hey, I know you live in Hingham, which is the town that I’m from, and I’m a huge Patriots fan, and we’re going for our third championship in a row, and I’m trying to keep it fresh and get them to understand that this is a separate tournament [from the previous two], so what advice would you have?’” she says. “I never figured he’d call back, but he did almost right away. I think [that] speaks to Bill’s relationship to the game of lacrosse, and to his relationships with the people in it.”

Scour the highest levels of coaching and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone more obsessed with a sport other than the one they obsess over for a living—let alone a legend with six Super Bowls (most all-time among NFL coaches), 31 playoff victories (also most) and 298 regular season wins (third-most). The evidence is well-documented, from the money that his foundation donated in 2017 to build Bill Belichick Field for aspiring lacrosse players in Uganda, to the Croatian national team hoodie that he was spotted rocking in ‘18. The enthusiasm has even influenced his team’s roster decisions: Chris Hogan, a former Penn State midfielder, spent three years as a Patriot, and earlier this month the Patriots hosted professional lacrosse player Dox Aitken, a former star high school receiver and safety, for a tryout at their rookie minicamp.

But there are the lesser-known markers, too, such as the lacrosse goal that Belichick puts up in his backyard for his grandchildren to shoot on when they visit. And the personal collection of 10-plus wooden lacrosse sticks that he has amassed since he was a teenager first learning to stitch up broken pockets with fresh rawhide. “Most of them are sticks that I used in high school & college,” Belichick explains in an email. “I have also been given sticks made by wooden stick makers on the reservation [of the Onondaga Nation in New York]. … Most of them are in my office at the stadium and I have a couple at home. I use one every couple of years.”

When he does, Belichick indulges in perhaps his favorite form of lacrosse—a simple game of catch. “It’s relaxing,” Belichick writes when asked what he enjoys most about it, listing his favorite partners as “old teammates & family.” But, as history shows, he isn’t picky about the time, place or people required to play either. Patriots long snapper Joe Cardona, a former high school lacrosse player, has tossed the ball around with him at team headquarters in Foxborough, Mass. So did a handful of Division I players when Gillette Stadium hosted the ‘17 NCAA men’s final four. “Bill came out to every practice for all of the teams,” University of Denver coach Bill Tierney, a legend in the game, recalls. “He was just throwing the ball around with the kids, and I think he was enjoying it as much as they were.” A decade earlier, then-Johns Hopkins goalie Jesse Schwartzman took the field for an otherwise ordinary Blue Jays practice only to find that Belichick would be warming him up in net. “Seeing him interviewed as a football coach, where you don’t know him, he seems pretty bland, keeping things close to the vest,” Schwartzman says now. “Shooting on me, he was just relaxed and being himself. It was a breath of fresh air.”

There is one particular lacrosse-related matter on which Belichick remains inscrutable, refusing to reveal even to friends whether he is a natural righty or lefty. “I took pride in being able to play with both hands in college . . . and still do,” he emails, ellipsis included. Otherwise, though, he is hardly bashful—gleefully gabbing both in private chats with his numerous connections in the sport, as well as during his recurring appearances on Premier Lacrosse League game broadcasts, a distinct contrast to his typically curt, borderline dour press conference persona. “I think that Bill is misunderstood in football, and maybe that’s purposeful,” Tierney says. “In lacrosse, he can just be Bill.”

Peel back the layers of Belichick’s passion, though, and you find more than just rarely seen parts of his personality. In fact, it isn’t ludicrous to suggest that, without all he has learned from this sport, Belichick wouldn’t have become nearly as successful in that one. “He respects the game, understands its history,” says PLL co-founder and president Paul Rabil. “It’ll always be a part of his life.”

“I’d say it’s his second-favorite sport,” adds Bob Shriver, former lacrosse coach at high school powerhouse Boys' Latin in Maryland. “But sometimes you wonder if it’s not his favorite.”

“It’s quite simple,” says Dave Pietramala, coach at Johns Hopkins from 2001 to 2020. “He loves lacrosse.”

For Belichick, now 71, lacrosse first took hold of him as a young boy in Annapolis, Md., where his father, Steve, was an assistant football coach at the Naval Academy. Asked what memories resonate most strongly from that era, Belichick replies with a rapid-fire history lesson: “I think about watching Navy football players play lacrosse at Navy under Bill Bilderback, watching them excel and win national championships through the ‘60s. Some notable players: Jim Campbell, Pat Donnelly, Steve Szabo, Carl Tamulevich, Chuck Voith. I also remember watching players from Annapolis excel in college: Alan Pastrana at Maryland and Charlie Coker at Hopkins.”

Before long, Belichick grew into more than just a fan, taking the lacrosse field at defense for Annapolis High School, attack for Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and finally midfield and backup goalie for Division 3 Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., serving as captain as a senior. (He also played tight end and center for the football team). “Bill was a very smart player,” Belichick’s coach at Annapolis, Ron Wolfe, told the Capital Gazette in ‘21. “He didn't have the greatest foot speed, but he understood the game and could anticipate situations.”

Even after quickly finding his way into the NFL upon graduation, taking a job as a special assistant with the Colts in 1975, Belichick kept lacrosse close: the next year, while working for the Lions as an assistant special teams coach, he also moonlighted as a boys’ lacrosse assistant at nearby Birmingham Detroit Country Day, coaching the high school’s attackmen.

His attachment to lacrosse grew even stronger with the arrival of his three children, each of whom gravitated to the game from an early age. Belichick was plenty involved early on, often volunteering on the sidelines to help coach their youth teams. But he was perfectly happy following along from the stands as all three again followed their dad by playing in college. (From oldest to youngest: Amanda at Wesleyan, Stephen at Rutgers, and Brian at D-3 Trinity.) “It’s a lacrosse family,” Tierney says. “It just so happens, maybe with the most famous football coach there is.”

By all accounts, Belichick consumes way less live lacrosse these days than he once did. “It was more when Steve, Amanda, & Brian were playing competitive[ly],” he writes. But his overall investment hasn’t waned, if only judging by the tens of thousands of dollars that the Bill Belichick Foundation annually gives to lacrosse programs around the globe. In addition to the aspiring Ugandan laxers who take the field that bears his name, players at Johns Hopkins study tape of upcoming opponents inside the Bill Belichick Film Room; according to tax filings, beneficiaries in 2020 included Walpole (Mass.) Youth Girls Lacrosse, the Sandhills (N.C.) Lacrosse Association, and Wheelchair Lacrosse USA.

Along with money, Belichick has also proven generous in giving his time to those the lacrosse community, whether delivering keynote speeches to NCAA all-American banquets or obliging requests for advice. Brown coach Mike Daly recalls Belichick addressing one of the teams he coached at Tufts when the Jumbos were practicing prior to a D-3 Final Four at Gillette Stadium. Amonte Hiller, whose Wildcats went on to win the ‘07, ‘08 and ‘09 NCAA titles for a five-peat following her cold call from Belichick, describes the football coach occasionally popping into her Boston-area summer camps and playing catch with the wide-eyed middle- and high-schoolers.

“Every time you turn around, Bill’s at a lacrosse game, standing on the sidelines with a stick in his hands,” says Shriver, who was initially introduced to Belichick at a club tournament that Brian was competing in, soon after which the longtime high school coach received a handwritten note on Patriots letterhead thanking him for the chat. “He’s been a great supporter of the game.”

“He attends games, he talks to teams, he knows what he’s talking about,” says Dave Pietramala, now an assistant at Syracuse. “I just don’t know he recognizes the clout that a person of his stature and a coach of his magnitude, the credibility it brings to lacrosse.”

Belichick’s contributions to lacrosse led the Tewaaraton Foundation, the group that oversees college lacrosse’s version of the Heisman Trophy, to give him a lifetime achievement award in 2020, though due to the pandemic the actual ceremony didn’t take place until last spring. In scheduling the makeup date, Tewaaraton chairman Jeff Harvey figured that Belichick’s attendance was “dicey at best,” given that it fell during Patriots spring practice. But Belichick made it anyway, chartering a private plane to Washington, D.C.—and even inviting along several lacrosse acquaintances from the Boston area, including the mother of Amonte Hiller, who was receiving a different legacy award at the ceremony—before flying back the same night.

For everything he has given lacrosse, though, players, coaches and others in the game who know Belichick well—and there are plenty of them—agree that he seems to get just as much back out of it, if not more. For instance: At the reception following Belichick’s acceptance of his Spirit of Tewaaraton Award, Harvey noticed that the man with six Lombardi trophies wouldn’t let go of this newest hardware.

“He never took it out of his hands the whole evening,” Harvey says. “Someone came up to him and said, ‘Can I put that someplace? It’s heavy.’ He said, ‘No, I’m gonna hold onto it.’”

Like Amonte Hiller, Pietramala first got to know Belichick over the phone, receiving an out-of-nowhere congratulatory call not long after coaching the Hopkins men to the ‘05 NCAA championship. Nearly two decades of friendship later, the coaches keep in touch today through recurring phone chats, “often at 5:30 to 6 in the morning when we’re driving to work, or 9 to 10 at night when we’re driving home,” Pietramala says. Topics run the gamut, but tend to lean heavy on coaching philosophy. “We talk a lot about preparation, like putting keys to the game up on the board, what's too much or too little,” Pietramala says. “He’ll want to know about our gameplans, like how we’re going to handle a star attackman. He’s always interested to hear why others do what they do.”

Over the years the two coaches have also taken trips to visit each other’s workplaces, attending practices and sitting in on player and staff meetings; asked for examples of areas where seeing Pietramala has influenced his work with the Patriots, Belichick provides a lengthy list: “Watching his pre-game preparation of the team, practice organization, use of video, halftime operation, motivation of players, handling problems, discipline—pretty much everything.” But Pietramala is far from the only lacrosse coach to influence how Belichick approaches football—tops being his daughter Amanda, who got her head coaching start at their mutual alma mater, Wesleyan, and has coached Holy Cross since 2016. “Amanda & I talk a lot about assistant coaches, team building, motivation, & player/coach communication,” the elder Belichick emails.

Similarly, Belichick continues, Tierney and Maryland coach John Tillman have evolved from passing connections—he met both through the Top 205 recruiting camps—to regular resources. So too have a host of professional lacrosse players (including brothers Lyle and Miles Thompson, who, in addition to Pietramala over the years, have spoken to the Patriots’ locker room at Belichick’s invitation) as well as Amonte Hiller. “He’ll text me every once in a while and ask me questions, like [about] how I’m dealing with something,” says the Northwestern coach, whose Wildcats recently captured the eighth NCAA title of her tenure with a dozen-goal rout of Boston College in the ‘23 final. “He’s just so humble. I’m going, ‘I should be getting advice from you.’”

Beyond adding tactics to his coaching arsenal, Belichick has also used lacrosse to bolster his roster and staff in New England: In addition to Hogan, who won two Super Bowls in three seasons as a shifty, versatile target for Tom Brady, the Patriots currently employ a pair of ex-college laxers in director of player operations and engagement Chris Mattes (a teammate of Steve Belichick’s at Rutgers) and cornerbacks coach Mike Pellegrino (a former Johns Hopkins player for Pietramala). “So I would say that those were mutually beneficial [people to have met through lacrosse],” Belichick writes.

Out of his many connections in the sport, Belichick reserves perhaps his strongest reverence for Rabil, describing the ex-Johns Hopkins and PLL star as “one of the most impressive people I have ever met, period.” Now 37, Rabil was a junior captain in college when he boldly asked Pietramala to put him in touch with Belichick. (“I knew they were close, so I wanted to see if I could have some one-on-one time to ask about winning,” Rabil recalls.) Belichick agreed, sitting down with Rabil in Pietramala’s office and sparking a lasting and rich relationship. “We’ve gone to each other’s games, we’ve gone out to dinner, we’ll share excerpts from books,” says Rabil, who also reports annually receiving a batch of “amazing” holiday cookies from the Belichick family.

Thanks in large part to the credibility provided by their relationship, Rabil turned heads last summer when he revealed during a podcast interview that Belichick had expressed interest in one day coaching a PLL team. Of course, the fact remains that no one, not even Rabil, knows when Belichick—entering his 29th NFL season 30 wins from the number-one spot—will retire from football. Nonetheless Rabil doubles down on his prediction when I ask him: “My hunch is that, if he does stop coaching football, he's going to start coaching or giving back to lacrosse again with his spare time. You better bet that [brother and co-founder Michael Rabil] and I would go to him and make a big offer. He could tell us to go kick rocks, or maybe we’d bring him on as an advisor.”

One of Belichick’s other closest lacrosse confidants, Pietramala, can also envision a similar future. “His love for football is clear, but his love for lacrosse is very clear too,” Pietramala says. “He’s a historian of both sports. He admires tradition. I know he really appreciates and values the leadership that Paul has shown in creating the PLL. It wouldn’t surprise me one day if he was on a sideline.” Naturally, Belichick defaults to press conference mode when asked via email to imagine his biggest challenge should he ever start coaching lacrosse, writing back, “I can’t answer hypothetical questions.”

For now, then, lacrosse remains purely a passion—and a pure one at that, friends observe, one unsullied by the stresses of his day job. “I think it brought joy to him when he was young, and I think we still see that to this day,” Pietramala says. Adds Rabil, “They call lacrosse the medicine game, in its original form, created by the Haudenosaunee. It’s meant to bring peace and serenity, and also uplift competitive spirits. That to me makes the most spiritual sense, when I hear how people get different versions of Coach Belichick when he's around lacrosse.”

One of Tierney’s former players, then-Denver defender Cal Kennedy, learned as much a decade ago, when he spotted Belichick and Tierney talking in the stands at Annapolis’ Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium while he and his teammates waited for their NCAA quarterfinal to begin. A lifelong Patriots fan from Concord, Mass., Kennedy patiently waited before bounding over to introduce himself, expecting a quick hello and a handshake. Instead, he came away with five minutes of Belichick’s time, a grainy picture covertly snapped by a flip phone-wielding teammate, and a lasting impression about his favorite football coach.

“It was funny,” Kennedy says. “All I wanted to do was ask him intricate questions about the Patriots, and all he wanted to do was shoot the shit about lacrosse.”