LONG ISLAND CONNECTION

S • Time to eat

Tori Brown became Syracuse’s team nutritionist in March and she’s already making changes

Page 12

Story by Anish Vasudevan senior staff writer

Photo by Jacob Halsema staff photographer

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the best goalies throughout Long Island trained at Stony Brook’s indoor lacrosse facility. They needed players to shoot on them so Joey Spallina called his friend

Michael Leo.

Leo drove an hour from Seaford, New York, and the pair tested their array of strikes against elite competition like Notre Dame’s Liam Entenmann. Spallina roamed at X and repeatedly fed a cutting Leo, improving their chemistry with every rep.

“That’s where we built our trust and, I’m blanking on the word,” Spallina said. Leo chimed in: “connection.” the number of goals Joey Spallina and Michael Leo have combined for

Spallina and Leo’s careers ascended in parallel on Long Island. They faced once in fifth grade, but their paths intersected in the last two years of high school when they both excelled on Team 91. Joe, Spallina’s dad, coached the pair in those two seasons and said their chemistry from the club circuit has directly carried over to college. Leo and Spallina have combined for 50 goals and assisted each other four times this season.

“Their chemistry was not overnight,” Joe said. “It was homemade, slow baked.” Leo and Spallina both started playing lacrosse around the age of 6. Leo immediately stuck out as a “slick lefty,” Team Igloo coach Keith Cromwell said. Spallina faced players up to two years older than him in travel ball, learning how to play o -ball, Joe said.

The pair’s work ethic mimicked each other, too. Leo trained 10 minutes away from his house in a park by the water with a bucket of 150 lacrosse balls, asking his dad Mike to stay longer even if the lights were half-on at 9:30 p.m. Spallina preferred to be an early bird, waking up before 5 a.m. to do shooting drills and watch hours of film on footwork and defenses.

“Those are two guys that have always committed to the extra work,” said Tom Schreiber, state