It can be hard to tell sometimes whether Brian Voelker is a coach or a counselor.
Make no mistake, the head coach of the Drexel men’s lacrosse team knows how to field his players. The team won the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) conference title last year, and made it to the final eight in the NCAA championship bouts.
Voelker pays close attention to the mechanics of the game: the catch, cradle and pass. But he is equally attentive — or perhaps even more so — to the human needs of his players.
“You have to teach them not just the game of lacrosse, but things about being a college student,” he says. “They are young men entering college and they have a lot of lessons to learn along the way.”
Drexel’s sixth lacrosse coach has learned a lot along the way himself. He took the reins in 2009 and has driven the team to new heights, closing his sixth season with a 57-36 record at the school. In 2014 he led the team to one of the best seasons in the school’s history, pulling off six straight wins at the end of the regular season.
The strong showing comes despite changes in the sport that Voelker says have not necessarily been for the better.
“The recruiting has changed,” he says. “The recruiting cycle gets earlier and earlier, which I don’t like at all. I don’t think kids are ready to commit to where they want to go to school when they are still freshmen and sophomores in high school.”
That kind of concern may help to explain why Voelker, when asked about his coaching style, talks not about the play on the field but rather about the off-field interplay between coach and student. “In some ways you feel like you are a father to these college kids,” he says.
“You have to teach them not just the game of lacrosse, but things about being a college student. They are young men entering college and they have a lot of lessons to learn along the way.” — Brian Voelker
Voelker recalls an incident in which a player was struck by a car and almost died.
“I’d go over there, be in the hospital, see tubes coming out everywhere. As a coach you don’t really know what to say to his mom and dad. These are situations that you are not always prepared for,” he says. “But on the flip side I was down in Annapolis for a wedding for a kid whom I coached, so you do get that part of it.”
Even as he watches his students grow, Voelker has also seen his sport mature over the years, reaching new heights of popularity and recognition. “When I grew up, if you didn’t live in Baltimore or Long Island or upstate New York, you really didn’t have an opportunity to play at the college level,” he says.
The sport slowly spread across the Mid-Atlantic region, and about 20 years ago lacrosse went nationwide. Now there is TV coverage of the game. Still, despite its rising popularity, lacrosse lives in the shadow of its larger cousin, with around a dozen scholarships at Drexel compared to 85 nationally for college football.
The rising profile of the game has brought with it new opportunities for coaches like Voelker — a chance to play on a bigger stage, to expand the breadth of their athleticism. While much of his time may be spent nurturing the hearts of his young players, he is equally committed to strengthening their game. For Voelker, this means driving home the message of teamwork.
“Everybody’s got a job to do,” Voelker says. “You have to score, you have to assist, you have to try to hit the ball back. There are a lot of different ways to do that and each kid is a little bit different, so as a coach you have to mesh all those things together. You have to make sure everybody’s playing the same direction.”