Lax Lowdown: Inspired by Tersolo, Pingree finishes season with 16-game win streak
Jun. 2—When Kevin Tersolo gathered members of his Pingree boys lacrosse team together before the 2022 campaign began, many of the players thought he'd be talking about their upcoming preseason trip to Florida, or perhaps some of the goals he wanted them to accomplish this spring.
What Tersolo told them — that he had been diagnosed with smoldering myeloma in his blood, and had been getting treatments for it for the last five months — send shockwaves across the room.
"My jaw hit the floor," said senior midfielder and captain Jack Feeks. "I never expected that."
As someone who has always put his program and his players — their well-being, their grades, helping get them into the best possible colleges and grooming them into five-time New England Small School boys lacrosse champions — Tersolo was not about to shift the focus onto himself.
"Coach was very honest with us. He said it started with a routine blood test, and one of the tests came back weird. It was the myeloma," added fellow captain and defenseman Tim Howe. "He told us, 'I'm trying to get ahead of this. I'm already seeing the best doctors and am fortunate to live so close to some of the best in the world.'
"He basically told us, 'This does not affect our season.' He had been told he was good to continue coaching, that the doctors would be there for him on the medical side, and for him to take care of us."
Then the Highlanders, after a tepid 3-3 start, went out and won their last 16 games in a row, something they had never done in Tersolo's 11 seasons. Pingree put up 301 goals en route to finishing 19-3, including triumphs over powerhouses such as New Hampton (12-7) Phillips Exeter (9-6) and, in the season finale, Phillips Andover (15-10).
"This is one of the teams I'm most proud of," said the 48-year-old Beverly native. "These guys lost a year-and-a-half of development because of COVID and only got a half-season last spring. Then, coming out this year, we were trying to develop them to be able to face some of the great competition we'd be facing — Exeter, Andover, Brewster, Thayer, Middlesex ... that was going to be a huge challenge. But our guys were determined to do it.
"All those wins to close out the year ... that's all on them."
Attackman Jack Savoie, who will head off to play at Roanoke (Va.) where Tersolo played college ball, had heard about his coach's illness earlier than most of his teammates through a Pingree alumni. After the initial shock, he kept quiet until Tersolo told the team himself. Then he and his fellow captains, Feeks and Howe, addressed their teammates.
"We talked about the situation for the first two weeks and then none of us dwelled on it, just like coach wanted," he said. "It was strictly business. But everyone knew who they were playing for this season. We were doing it for Kev."
Early action
At a routine physical, Tersolo's primary care physician did a test on one of his blood proteins that came back elevated. A more specific test revealed that was also elevated, and he was sent to an oncologist for more testing.
On September 16 of last year, it was determined that Tersolo had smoldering myeloma — a rare form of myeloma that causes high numbers of plasma cells in the bone marrow.
"I was very lucky that I got it at the time that I did," said Tersolo. "I had 30 percent of the cells in my actual marrow, but it didn't attack my bones or organs."
Tersolo went to see Dr. Irene Ghobrial at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, one of the top smoldering myeloma specialists in the country. He learned that his options were to monitor the illness, which in two years would likely progress into active myeloma, or he could choose to go into one of the trials.
He chose the latter and was accepted into a 4-drug trial at Dana Farber, an FDA approved trial for treating active myeloma. He started the two-year trial last September 23 and went into Boston every Tuesday morning for the first six months for treatment; now, in his seventh month, he goes every other week. As part of it, Tersolo gets two subcutaneous injections into his stomach, in addition to two pill medications he takes each day.
Tersolo's system has responded beautifully. Always in peak physical shape — he's worked as a personal trainer at the Hamilton Athletic Club for the last 24 years and has managed the facility for almost as long — his health, young age and lifestyle choices have certainly helped.
"I do three major tests at the end of each month, and right now I've hit the normal range on all three major tests," said Tersolo, the father of three children (Carolyn, Matthew and Andrew) with his wife, Kristin. "I'm where I should be; on my last bone marrow biopsy it showed I have less than 5 percent of cells as opposed to 30 percent before."
Once he was cleared to coach this season, Tersolo was adamant he didn't want there to be any distractions regarding his health. He told his players to continue to put the emphasis on keeping their grades up and better themselves and their team.
As a result, going to practice each day and coaching became more cathartic than ever for Tersolo, whose teams are a stellar 134-40 in his 11 seasons on the South Hamilton campus.
"It was nice not worrying about any of my stuff and just focusing on what was in front of us as a team," he admitted. "It was a great distraction for me not to have that reminder."
Going on a streak
A half-dozen games into the season, Pingree suffered back-to-back losses — virtually unheard of during Tersolo's tenure. There was some soul searching among the players and a renewed commitment to making things right.
Feeks, a Georgetown native who will take his lacrosse talents to Babson, said he could tell during the loss to Brewster, a cold, wet day where guys were shivering on the sidelines and on the bus ride home, that things had to change.
"No disrespect to those teams, but those were all winnable games that we gave to them because of our mistakes," he said. "The captains and I had a long talk with the boys after that game, where a lot of people participated and said what they were thinking. The gist of it was we were sick of losing, 'This is not us; this is not Pingree lacrosse'. We needed to turn it around for ourselves and for Kev. After that, everyone got a little more focused and serious. There was a definitely chemistry shift."
Feeks' father played a role in that. As someone who films the Highlanders' game from various camera angles, he'd present highlights of games for the boys to watch. In this instance, though, Tersolo had him put together a 'lowlights' video for the squad to watch their miscues and turnovers on film.
"I showed them so they could visually see and understand the mistakes we were making, and that we weren't going to win if they continued to make those mistakes," said Tersolo. "When I showed it, the room was silent. Everyone could see it as opposed to me telling them about it."
Pingree came out the next game and drilled the Brooks School, 17-4, then edged past Moses Brown, 13-12, and were off to the races. They won their next 14 games in a row, often in blowout fashion.
Howe, the defenseman who will play at Franklin & Marshall, termed this year "a breakthrough season culture-wise", crediting the team's self-apppointed 'Bench Mob' for providing constant energy from the sidelines.
"We made the leap to be committed to each other and the team itself," he said. "From that time we had the team meeting and said, 'Now it starts', we never lost again."
"There was a practice when (goalie) Mike Mabius first came back from injury, where we were doing a shooting drill," added Savoie. "We were just pinning the corners on all of our goalies; righties, lefties, hitting all of our shots. I said to myself, 'We've learned how to shoot properly. This is going to be fun the rest of the way'."
A hard driver who excepts — and usually gets — excellence from his players, Tersolo never let up off the gas pedal, either.
"Kev is a very unique coach, one of the best I've ever played for," Savoie said. "He cares so much; we're like his second family, and he's hard on us because he knows what we're capable of and always wants us to play up to those expectations. He gets on us for silly mistakes because he knows how good we can be.
"He's like a father figure, but can be like a demon at the same time," Savoie added with a chuckle. "I'm proud of our young guys for how they took his advice and criticisms and turned it around to make them better and grow as players."
Freshman Max Becker went "above and beyond what I expected" in goal, said Tersolo. The same held true for faceoff specialist Colin McLoy. He expected both the starting attack (Bodie Cannata, Charlie Faldi and Savoie) and the starting middies (Riley McClure, Mekhi Taylor and Feeks) to play at another level, and they did. Long stick middies Rogan Cardinal and Remy Poisson, short stick D-middies Cody Plaza and Jamie Book, and close defensemen Cam Dick, Francisco Morlaes and Howe got better as the season went on and never broke down even when the opportunity to do so arose.
Tersolo has a boatload of talent returning in 2023, too. Sean Stevens, who was injured for most of the year, will join Taylor and McClure as scoring midfielders; Dylan Feeks will be back with Cannata up front; McLoy is back, and so are Becker, Morales and Dick, Ryan Kavanaugh, Quinn Donovan, Nick Moulison and many others.
"My No. 1 goal in all of this," said Tersolo, "is that when people look at me, I never want to be 'the coach with cancer'. I want to be recognized as the coach that focused on developing all of these young players to get the best out of their ability. That's really important to me."
Contact Phil Stacey
@PhilStacey_SN
Contact Phil Stacey
@PhilStacey_SN
