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Before Nick Caccamo played at an Inside Lacrosse tournament on the eve of Sept. 1, 2020, he handed his phone to his dad, Frank. The NCAA’s then-recent rule change prevented college coaches from reaching out to players before September of their junior years, so when the calendar month flipped that night, Frank was bombarded by 30 or 40 phone calls and texts.

The messages started at midnight, while Caccamo was still playing in IL’s inaugural Midnight Mania tournament, and continued into the early morning hours. But Syracuse — the university Caccamo grew up idolizing — wasn’t one of them. The Class of 2020 defender still has his first lacrosse stick in his bedroom, which is dyed orange with the SU logo and the iconic No. 22 at the top. His dad attended SUNY Geneseo but supported SU, something he passed down to his children. Frank is friends with Rodney Dumpson, who played on the midfield line with the Gait brothers, too.

With no SU offer, Caccamo eventually signed with Yale. Then, the Ivy League announced there wouldn’t be a spring 2021 lacrosse season due to the pandemic, and Caccamo entered the transfer portal in February. This time, the Orange called. 

He came up to tour the Syracuse campus on Presidents’ Day weekend with his dad, unable to take an official visit because of the pandemic and the resulting NCAA dead period. The on-campus experience confirmed what he already knew — Caccamo wanted to play for Syracuse, and on Feb. 19, the four-star recruit committed. 

“I just felt that was the right decision, the right place for me,” Caccamo said. “I felt like it was just a perfect situation that I want to be in.”

Caccamo’s rise started in third grade, when he joined Team 91 Long Island Crush, coached by Joe Spallina. The legendary club team featured Brennan O’Neill, Andrew McAdorey and Joey Spallina, the No. 1 recruits in the Classes of 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively.

During the summer after his sophomore year, Caccamo made a leap. He changed his habits off the field by working with two personal trainers, and throughout the pandemic and the lost senior season, he worked to improve his physique and skillset in preparation to fight for playing time next season at SU. 

“Obviously, you’ve got to go earn it,” said Joe, who’s also the women’s lacrosse head coach at Stony Brook. “But I think he has the talent and potential to be a four-year starter.”

When Caccamo was in third grade, Frank remembers when a family friend offered to facilitate contact with Brian Spallina, the founder of Team 91. Brian asked Frank to bring his son to a December practice, but Frank couldn’t because of an office party. 

His wife, Susan, was angry about having to drive an hour for Caccamo to practice. But when Brian arrived, she understood. 

“It’s just a completely different skill level,” Frank said of Team 91. 

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Caccamo played with an older Team 91 team as a trial. Three days later, Frank received calls from Brian and Joe asking Caccamo to play with Team 91 2020 Crush. Caccamo started on the “B” team before being promoted to the “A” team two weeks later — but as a defenseman.

Susan disagreed with the decision. She told Joe “No, no, no, Nick’s an attackman,” but he pushed back. And soon, Caccamo’s new role had been cemented. 

Looking back now, Caccamo laughs at the story of how he transitioned to becoming a long-pole. He and his family didn’t realize at the time how talented the offensive players on that Crush team were. Frank remembers seeing Joey score behind the back, “painting the corner,” at Caccamo’s first tournament with Team 91 Crush. A few months later, they added O’Neill, too.

“(Caccamo) very quickly realized that there’s a big difference between him and Brennan O’Neill and him and Joey Spallina — maybe defense is not a bad thing,” Frank said. “And honestly, a year or two after that, he loved it and never wanted to switch back.”

Joe said the 2020 Crush group lost three games from the time Caccamo joined in third grade until the Lake Placid Summit Lacrosse Tournament in 2019, their final games as a group. It mythologized Team 91 Crush, Caccamo said. He remembers a tournament in seventh grade when an opposing player asked if there’s a “Crush high school” that all of the players attend. 

And while that didn’t exist, Joe ran practices as if they were in high school, even collecting report cards. He was notorious for three-hour practices three or four times a week starting when the kids were in elementary school, Frank said. They used the same drills, with no breaks in between, that Joe used with Major League Lacrosse’s New York Lizards. 

“Those practices were brutal,” Caccamo said. “I definitely was not looking forward to going to those ever. But, looking back, those were huge for us, and those helped me as a player.”

Out of high school, Caccamo went to Yale but entered the transfer portal to avoid wasting a second year of eligibility due to COVID-19 program shutdowns. Courtesy of Frank Caccamo

Caccamo’s jump to becoming a top-50 recruit in the nation came after his sophomore year, when he began working with his first personal trainer, Mike Anderson. Anderson taught Caccamo the basics of nutrition, starting with macronutrients and how to track food intake. The lessons stuck in Caccamo’s mind. This past weekend, he traveled to Delaware to watch his younger brother play in the qualifiers for the World Series of Youth Lacrosse and made sure to pack his food scale, Frank said. 

Caccamo called himself a “string bean” his first two years of high school. Even when colleges could start reaching out to him on Sept. 1 of his junior year, he said he was around 170 pounds. Three months later, he bulked up to nearly 200. 

“(Anderson) was who made the transition very smooth,” Caccamo said. “If I did it myself, I guarantee I would have been stiff and chubby, and I wouldn’t have been able to move for a while until I figured it out.”

In the fall tournaments that year, Caccamo remembers he could just give one little shove and send opponents reeling backwards. Before, he’d have to use all his strength just to drive dodgers off their line. 

With the increased confidence from growing into his 6-foot-2 frame, he became the top defender at Harborfields (N.Y.) High School. His junior year, Caccamo accrued nearly 20 points as a defenseman and long-stick midfielder, said Glenn Lavey, Caccamo’s high school coach. He led Harborfields to a second straight Suffolk County championship. 

The same year, Caccamo began training with Michael Feldman, a former wide receiver at Florida Atlantic University. Feldman focused mainly on footwork and agility, tweaking football drills to Caccamo’s needs. He ran Caccamo through ladder drills and backward transition drills, which simulate how to backpedal then turn and sprint to match dodges. They also had “track days” with 40-yard and 55-meter sprints. 

Since coming back from Yale at the end of last October, Caccamo took what he learned from Feldman and old drills he ran with Team 91 Crush to “shadow” defend by himself. He put out cones at different spots on the field where attacks typically try to dodge against him and practiced his movement and stick work. 

Caccamo has also attended most of Joe’s “pick-up practices” with college lacrosse players who stayed home for the semester and some local high school talent. He’s also planning on joining a men’s box lacrosse league in Long Island that starts in May. He said he’s doing everything that he can to make sure he’s not rusty. 

A day before Duke played Syracuse last week, Caccamo called his old friend O’Neill, Frank said. He told the star Duke freshman to enjoy the next night against the Orange because, a year from then, Caccamo would be guarding O’Neill — just like through all those years in practice for Team 91 Crush. Caccamo’s confident that, after losing two lacrosse seasons, he’ll be ready to go when he finally arrives at his dream school.

Published on March 30, 2021 at 11:35 pm

Contact Arabdho: armajumd@syr.edu | @aromajumder