Ask around and Mike Leveille’s Syracuse lacrosse teammates will all tell you – he doesn’t look like a freshman, he doesn’t act like a freshman and he certainly doesn’t play like one.

Ask his brother Kevin, and his father, George, and they’ll tell you they’re not surprised.

Leveille has always been a step ahead, playing with guys five and six years older. So expect him to be one of Syracuse’s top players when he opens the season starting at attack. In his first collegiate scrimmage against Navy, he netted a team-high four goals.

‘It’s really been a dream of mine to play here,’ Leveille said. ‘(Syracuse) has been all that I’ve expected it to be.’

Ever since he was 7 years old, Leveille would button his chin strap and nestle up alongside older kids for a groundball, never once complaining when he was thrown to the ground by bigger opponents, never once getting discouraged by the sport he loves.

It’s a relationship Leveille has fostered since he was in first grade. George, who became acquainted with lacrosse when he was an undergrad at Niagara University, introduced Mike and Kevin to the sport in 1990. Before then, hockey was the game of choice for Albany kids. There were no youth lacrosse leagues and the only time the Leveille boys were able to play was when they were in their backyard or when they could convince the neighborhood kids to pick up a stick.

So George met with some friends who played in a local 30-plus league and they decided to start a league for kids. They talked to some hockey parents and took whoever was interested, all ages from 7 to 13. The first year, the Albany Capitals Lacrosse League didn’t have any real teams, just 35 kids who would get together and scrimmage.

‘He was just a helmet with feet,’ George said of the first time Mike played. ‘It was hard the first couple of years, but it was a good program.’

The league wasn’t the hard-hitting action Leveille is used to now. It was mostly focused on skills, stick work and learning the fundamentals of the game.

‘Mike was always playing up,’ Kevin said. ‘At first because of lack of any other team to play with. We all just started playing at the same time. It’s been an advantage to him because he started with kids four years older.’

Still, Leveille surrendered 50 pounds and half a foot to many of his opponents.

Over the next few years the league grew, though. The appeal of lacrosse spread through suburban Albany youth like beanie babies. This year, 1,600 kids are in the league. (Currently, George, who retired from playing due to a hip injury, is trying to set up an inner-city Albany team.)

‘My brother and my father have been good to me, they have always given me chances to play,’ Leveille said. ‘My brother has especially been getting me mentally prepared for college.’

In addition to lacrosse, Mike and Kevin (now playing professionally for the Boston Cannons) played hockey and soccer. Mike’s high school lacrosse coach and history teacher at Albany Academy, Mark Wimmer, said Mike could have played hockey in college had he invested as much time into it as he did lacrosse.

Initially, George said he got into lacrosse to hone his stick-handling skills for hockey.

‘I found it was a great complement to hockey,’ George said. ‘There’s a lot you can learn from it. I think that leads you to being more lacrosse implemented.’

George played hockey growing up, but once he and his friends at Niagara ventured into lacrosse, they never got out. Despite the game itself, lacrosse had its advantages – kids played for the love of the game.

‘In reality, you’re not going to make your living playing lacrosse,’ George said. ‘With hockey, they’re driving to make it to the NHL. That doesn’t come with lacrosse. It’s a sport, it’s a game.’

Said Kevin: ‘Hockey was more like a job. We had up to 65 or 80 games a year. You had to go away for weekends at a time.’

From the end of eighth grade, Leveille was playing on Albany Academy’s varsity lacrosse team. George, who had coached the team before Wimmer, left when Kevin moved on to play at Massachusetts.

Leveille was among the smallest kids on the team, but you could tell his sense of the game was superb. He was quick and his left-handed shot was as accurate as anyone’s. At the annual Empire State Games and Lake Placid Summit Tournament, SU head coach John Desko was already taking notice.

Then Leveille hit a four-inch growth spurt that cemented his status as a dominant young star.

‘Between his freshman and sophomore year of high school – over that summer I started looking up to him,’ Kevin said. Leveille, now a lean 6-foot-2, looks down at George and Kevin who are each 5-foot-10.

At the start of his junior year, in a game against Loomis-Chaffee of Windsor, Conn., Leveille was sandwiched by a double-team. The result – a broken arm. That’s when Leveille’s grit and determination shined the brightest.

‘He was in the huddle later in the game asking if we would put him back in,’ Wimmer said.

Leveille missed his entire junior season, but he was in the weight room every day, prepping for summer tournaments that would earn him scholarship offers from just about every major lacrosse program in the country.

Ultimately, Syracuse was the best fit for him.

After committing before the start of his senior season, Leveille scored 55 goals and notched 33 assists, earning him high school All-American honors. So far at SU, he’s earned himself a starting role on the lacrosse team and a 3.6 grade point average – a number he’s not satisfied with, George said.

‘He’s giving our defense fits in practice,’ Desko said. ‘He’s as good as a freshman as we’ve had at this stage of the game.’

Said freshman defender Kyle Guadagnolo: ‘He’s gonna be one hell of a player. There are kids who can handle the ball and shoot, but the way he knows the game – it’s like he’s been here before.’

Published on March 7, 2005 at 12:00 pm