The conditions were damp and the field was slick as the No.
15 North Carolina men’s lacrosse team slugged it out with No. 5 Maryland
Terrapins in a feisty game.
Hard hits came frequently and scrappy play was the norm for
both teams as the hotly contested rivalry game evoked high emotions.
It was no place for an inexperienced freshman.
Yet for some reason, something possessed coach Joe Breschi
to play then freshman Joey Sankey. Weighing in at 155 pounds and standing at
5-foot-5, the physically unimpressive freshman was beat and battered in the
2012 contest.
But somehow, he found a way to shine on the gloomy day.
“That was kind of his intro to division one lacrosse,”
Breschi said. “He goes out there and he scraps and claws and gets absolutely
hammered, but has a nose for the cage.”
Leading the Tar Heels to an upset win at home, Sankey had a
hat trick and the breakout game of his Carolina career. Getting layed out and
knocked to the ground every time he got close to the cage, Sankey showed outstanding
tenacity by scoring all three of his goals while being hit.
“That was definitely one of the top-five most fun games I’ve
played in,” Sankey said. “I just remember when I got the game ball coach
Breschi said something about how all my goals I was on the ground for.”
Simply put by Breschi, “He earned it.”
Since that day, Sankey hasn’t grown physically. He’s still
5-foot-5 and likely will be the rest of his life. But he didn’t let it stop him
then, and he doesn’t let it stop him now — never has, never will.
No excuses
Sankey’s played sports all his life. As the youngest boy in
his family, Sankey’s always fought to keep up with his older brothers, and he’s
been raised to never let excuses explain a lack of effort.
“Dad would have kicked my ass if I didn’t (play) hard,”
Sankey said. “He instilled that in me really early.”
“No matter what sport it was if I ever didn’t give it my all
or didn’t give it 100 percent, I would hear it the entire car ride home, the
entire night until I went to bed.”
Using that mentality, the physically unimposing athlete
never let his lack of height be used as an excuse for anything. Instead Sankey
studied the greats, more specifically those who shared his height disadvantage.
Watching players like Wes Welker from football and Mikey
Powell from lacrosse, Sankey tried to emulate the professionals’ movements and
adapt them to his game.
While Welker and Powell weren’t quite as short, Sankey still
found that sometimes there were ways players his height could find advantages
on the field.
For the Tar Heel stud, those advantages include using speed
and a low center of gravity to duck under defenders fighting for groundballs
and squeeze his body in tight spaces around the crease of the cage to make
improbable goals.
So when Breschi was scouting Sankey in high school at Penn
Charter to see if he would make a good future Tar Heel, it was a no brainer.
“There was no thinking twice,” Breschi confidently claimed.
“I knew right away I wanted to recruit him. He was on our list in a hurry.”
Despite committing early on, that didn’t keep the youngster
from having doubts once he got to Chapel Hill.
A friendly competition
Sankey’s not shy about admitting that he had second thoughts
the fall of his freshman year. He was young and undersized.
Not only was Sankey dealing with the often overwhelming
situation of adjusting to college level lacrosse, the Pennsylvanian was
surrounded by amazingly talented and experienced players.
From Marcus Holman, who currently holds the UNC record for
points, to Nicky Galasso, who had just had arguably the best freshman year of
any player in UNC history, everywhere Sankey turned he saw another person he’d
have a tough time beating out to get playing time.
“I kind of struggled a little bit,” Sankey said. “I’d be
lying if I said it wasn’t running through my head, me questioning myself about
whether I could play at this level.”
But then the injuries started to come.
With players like Galasso and others being limited due to
injuries, Sankey quickly worked his way up the depth chart.
“Who knows if I would have played for the next few years if
those certain guys weren’t injured,” Sankey said.
There was only one person standing in Sankey’s way — Jimmy
Bitter.
Bitter and Sankey both came to UNC the same year and both
ranked in the top ten according to Inside Lacrosse’s rankings.
With injuries hurting the Tar Heels each received his fair
share of chances to play and make a difference.
“You never knew freshman year how much time you were going
to get,” Sankey admitted. “It was almost a competition to see who messed up
first and the person who messed up first would get less playing time.”
“When we played we weren’t actually at our best,” Bitter
added. “It hurt us… because the thing we’re best at is taking chances and
playing with reckless abandon.”
But it didn’t take long for the two to become starters — and
friends.
“When we first got to college we weren’t that tight,” Sankey
said. “I thought he was pretty annoying.”
Without the stress of trying to beat out Bitter for a job,
Sankey felt like he could play more freely and started to get close to the
outgoing spunky sharpshooter.
“When you’re with someone every single day of the week,
instead of thinking he’s arrogant you think he’s funny,” Sankey said. “He’s
still annoying though.”
As the two entered their senior season both have become
vocal leaders and captains of the team as they look to finally take the Tar
Heels to championship weekend in their last effort to win an NCAA title at UNC.
Ending on top
He’d be lying if said it wasn’t in the back of his mind. The
thought of being the best UNC attackman ever is a pretty cool thought to say
the least.
And Sankey has a chance to be just that.
Last weekend Sankey passed Marcus Holman’s UNC record of 213
career points. Sankey played with Holman for two years and reaped the benefits
of playing along side the hardworking, savvy former record holder.
But now Sankey has a chance to surpass the guy he used to
look up to as a leader. Having accumulated 157 points in his first three years,
Sankey was just 56 points away from matching Holman’s record. Last season
alone, the undersized All-American had 57 points.
It was almost a form of poetic justice that on Sankey’s
senior day against the No. 2 Syracuse Orange he’d tally three points on his way
to accumulating his 214th point in front of 6,000 fans.
Not too bad for a kid who gets heckled with taunts like
“midget” and “Mini-Me from Austin Powers.”
“I definitely did not expect to be the leading scorer on the
team any year,” Sankey humbly attested. “It’s just one of those things where I
just feel like I lucked out and picked the right place, the right team.”
Obviously it wasn’t completely luck.
Sankey’s speed, tenacity, fast shot, off-ball movement,
ability to distribute and insanely high lacrosse IQ did a lot to help his
cause.
In short, he’s able to make any play the team needs whenever
they need it.
No situation better exemplifies that talent than a game in
2014 against the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays.
The Tar Heels trailed 7-4 in the game early on, but in the
second half, the team miraculously turned it on offensively and gained a
lead.
As time slowly ran out for the Blue Jays, the Tar Heels were
looking to milk the clock on offense as much as possible to let their defense
rest without drawing a stalling warning from the referees.
Taking on his man from behind the goal, Sankey managed to
get his defender hung up in front of the net. If the defender went left, Sankey
would have a wide-open lane right. If the defender went right, Sankey would
have a wide-open lane left.
Knowing that a recent rule change allowed Sankey to stay
behind the net without drawing a delay of game as long as his teammates were
making cuts in front of the goal, the savvy attackman waved his arms back and
forth directing his teammates to move like a conductor orchestrating a string
ensemble.
“I knew that this was a perfect time to try and wait as long
as I could back there and make that defenseman or that goalie come out,” Sankey
said. “For some odd reason they just didn’t do that.”
By the time a Blue Jay defender finally moved toward Sankey,
the damage was already done. Minutes had run off the clock and fans in the
stadium were livid that so much time could be taken off the clock from a player
simply sitting behind the goal.
“I heard Hopkins fans, even North Carolina fans, screaming
to try and do something because they were bored watching me back there,” Sankey
said.
“I was just patient.”
It’s savvy play like that that got Sankey to where he is
today.
He may not have the size that many players rely on, but he
doesn’t need it. He’s got more than enough skill to make up for it.
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