Former CHS lax player walks on to national title winner

When Dan Dillon arrived at Merrimack College as a freshman in the fall of 2017, he had every reason to wonder if his days playing competitive lacrosse were over. A former standout attackman for the CHS varsity squad as well as a former Bulldog starting quarterback, Dillon went unrecruited out of high school and was prepared to pursue a student manager’s position with the Warriors’ football team when Mike Morgan, the Merrimack men’s lacrosse coach, unexpectedly came calling with a tryout offer a month into the school year.

Dan Dillon (left) with the national championship trophy

“I was sitting in my dorm room with [fellow CHS alum] Tommy Kilduff when I got an email from Coach Morgan,” Dillon recalled. “Since I missed the walk-on tryouts, my tryout was just joining a couple of practices. After two practices Coach Morgan offered me a spot on the team.”

Dillon, it turns out, was the final piece of the roster puzzle and one of only three walk-ons to earn a spot on this year’s team. And what a team it proved to be, as the Warriors went on to win a school-record 18 games while tearing through the NCAA Division II tournament en route to the program’s first ever national title.

The fact that they accomplished the feat on the Gillette Stadium turf — just 50 miles from campus and the same venue where the 2017 squad fell painstakingly short in last year’s national finals — made it that much sweeter for the Merrimack players and their legion of fans.

While Dillon himself did not see any action in the postseason, he did manage to get in five regular season contests and was right there on the sidelines cheering on his teammates as they dominated sixth-ranked Saint Leo University 23-6 to capture their first NCAA trophy.

“My first season as a college athlete was incredible,” said the Canton native and now national champion. “I got to meet the 40 best guys on campus. The team taught me a lot about being hardworking and being consistent. Consistently showing up to practice and going 110 percent. I was able to get some playing time in the lopsided games and it felt great. For someone that was never supposed to be on the team, being able to dress on the sideline was a dream come true.”

Already a national powerhouse over the past several campaigns under Coach Morgan, the Warriors raised the bar to new heights this year with a standout crop of underclassmen, losing only one game all year (18-1) and capping it all off with one of the most dominant championship game performances in NCAA men’s lacrosse history. Their 17-goal margin of victory, in fact, set a new NCAA title game record across all three divisions and their 23 total goals tied the record set previously by UMBC and Hobart.

The squad also made good on its four team goals for the season, which Dillon said was to “out-work every team in the nation, have at least a 3.0 team GPA, go undefeated at home, and win a national championship.”

As for Dillon finding his way onto a team of this caliber and loaded with talent, his former coach at Canton High, Bill Bendell, said he couldn’t be prouder but he’s also not surprised. He said that Dillon took the initiative on his own to get some tape together and reach out to the Merrimack coaching staff and while he didn’t have the gaudy stats or the individual accolades of a typical college recruit, he had always been incredibly driven as an athlete and was passionate about the sport of lacrosse.

Starting out in the Canton Youth Lacrosse program as a seventh grader, Dillon said he was drawn to lacrosse because it combined many of the elements of the other sports that he enjoyed playing. “It had the physicality of football and the pace of basketball,” he said. “Also it had a major mental factor that all sports had.”

Dillon said football in particular helped in his development as a lacrosse player. “Being a quarterback helped me with lacrosse because it forced me to know exactly what each of my teammates were doing on any given play,” he said, “because for any given play in the sport you could be in a different spot and have to know where to go.”

Dillon acknowledged that it was a big adjustment going from the high school to the college game, where the players are noticeably faster and more skilled; however, he said he received great support from his new teammates and coaches and already had a strong foundation from his time with the CHS lacrosse program.

“My experience playing for Canton High was great and I would not be the player I am without coaches Bendell, Pfeifer and Hickox — they were all excellent coaches,” he said. “From my freshman year to my senior year, playing lacrosse at Canton High was always something I looked forward to.”

Looking ahead to next season, Merrimack is poised to again be a top contender in Division II with several talented underclassmen set to return, led by sophomore Charlie Bertrand and freshmen Christian Thomas and Sean Black.

Dillon is also looking forward to being back with the Warriors next season and has high hopes for both himself and the team. “My personal goals over the next three years is to help my team anyway I can and get back to the national championship,” he said.

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Posted by Jay Turner on Jun 16 2018. Filed under Beyond CHS, Sports. Both comments and pings are currently closed.