Park City’s Chase Beyer was clutch late in the season, named 2023 Deseret News Mr. Lacrosse recipient
Chase Beyer is the epitome of clutch, and that was never more evident than during Park City’s march to a 5A boys lacrosse state championship this season.
During the regular season Park City lost to 5A foes Alta, Brighton and Olympus. But a few weeks later during its “revenge tour” in the playoffs, led by Chase, the Miners avenged all three of those close losses to secure the 5A repeat.
Beyer finished with 11 goals and four assists in those three games, but just as important was the confidence he played with and how it helped everyone around him rise to the championship level.
“He has an incredibly positive attitude, he makes the players around him better, he makes his coaches better coaches,” said Park City coach Michael Persky.
For all the contributions he made on and off the field for Park City, Beyer has been selected as the Deseret News 2023 Mr. Lacrosse recipient, the third in the history of the award.
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Beyer has signed to continue playing collegiately at Division III Tufts College in Massachusetts this fall. The mentality he’s displayed here in Utah at the varsity level the past three years should serve him well at the next level.
He finished the season with 58 goals, 33 assists, 61 ground balls and 12 caused turnovers.
When asked to describe his playing style, Beyer said, “I think I play pretty calm, but also tenacious at the same time. There’s times when I’m really going after it and there’s times I like to toy with my defender and kind of mess around with them and mess around with the defense a bit.”
His coach said it’s the things that don’t show up on the stat sheet that are equally as important, pointing out how hard he rides to win the ball back for his team, and how good he is at controlling the tempo of a match.
Another asset was Beyer’s ability to read the defenses throughout a match, no doubt a product of being Park City’s starting quarterback in football the past couple years.
His willingness to play a mentor role was critical as well.
“This year we knew we weren’t going to have success if we couldn’t develop younger players. Chase knew that, the captains knew that, and they went out of their way to make the younger guys feel part of the team in games and in practices,” said Persky.
As Beyer said, “I think just being an older guy on the team you feel that responsibility to kind of bring the young guys with you and show them what we’re all about throughout the season.”
That inexperience played a role in those three tough regular season losses, a 12-11 OT loss to Alta, a 13-12 loss to Brighton and a 15-5 drubbing against Olympus.
“They weren’t games that we necessarily just lost because the other team was way better than us. They were the kind of games where the other team definitely put out a great game, better than us that day, but we knew didn’t put out what were capable of putting out,” said Beyer.
Beyer himself wasn’t at his best in those games, and as a result Park City marched into the playoffs as a No. 3 seed and a playoff underdog to Brighton and Olympus.
In hindsight, nobody should’ve been surprised that Beyer flipped the script in the playoffs after the way he delivered in the playoffs a year ago.
Past Deseret News Mr. Lacrosse winners
2022 — Mason Quick, Corner Canyon
2021 — Garrett Haas, Lone Peak
In 2022, Beyer broke his wrist three weeks into the season and didn’t return until the final week of the regular season. In Park City’s four playoff wins, he scored 17 goals, including five in the 10-9 win over Olympus.
Persky recalls Beyer’s intense work ethic the night before the championship.
“After practice Chase was out there with a bucket of balls and he was shooting from every place on the field,” said Persky.
Beyer’s five goals in the championship game came from five different spots on the field.
A year later in a championship repeat against Olympus, he scored four goals and handed out two assists as Park City pulled away for the emphatic 11-6 win after losing to the same team by 10 goals 23 days earlier.
“Chase is a special guy and a special player,” said Persky.
