Sean Steinwald was a NCAA Division I All-American this year. He is actually half-Canadian. His father was a cadet at West Point and his mother is a French Canadian. He was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia in 1976 but his family moved to Burlington, Ontario when he was three, then to Ottawa when he was ten.

Sean's dual citizenship is personified in his lacrosse game. He has enjoyed a great deal of success in both the Canadian box game and the American field game. He played on the Minto Cup champion Whitby Warriors in 1997. This year he lead the Ivy League in scoring and helped Cornell to its first NCAA playoff berth since 1995. His April 11th hat trick helped the Big Red defeat Syracuse 13-12 for the biggest upset of the year and the only loss for the eventual national champion Orangemen.

Sean's selection as an All-American was followed by an invitation to play in the annual North-South Senior All-Star Game at the University of Delaware. He played alongside Ryan Powell and punctuated his college career by scoring a few goals against the country's top-flight defenders. I had a chance to sit down and chat with him after the game.

Sean's first field lacrosse experience was going to a summer camp at Westpoint when he was twelve. The surprising thing about his college success is that his only field experience prior to his arrival in the town of Ithaca, New York was that camp and three more of them. That's it! He played box lacrosse just outside Ottawa in Gloucester, Ontario. That was one of the less mainstream areas of lacrosse in Canada at the time.

I asked him what he considered the toughest lacrosse adjustments for him to make were in going to Cornell. "Ohhh! Going left ..." he says with a wide-eyed smile and nods his head. "Facing long sticks and getting speared!" he continues, now frowning and shaking his head. We talked about the different styles of checking in the two games. The poke-checks and wrap checks are the most common and have been mastered by players in the field game. The box game assigns a minor penalty (Rule 73) for "Wrap Around" if that check impedes the progress of the ball carrier. The poke check is not used in the box game because "Spearing" is a major penalty (Rule 65). The crosscheck and slap check are the most common in the box game and are used with fervor. Crosschecking and slashing are personal fouls (Rule 5, Sections 3 & 5) in the field game. We talked about how fine a line there can between a poke check and a spear or between a slap check and a slash. One thing that surprised me a bit was that when I brought up how fights can start just because there is a lack of understanding, he expressed his belief that fighting should not be allowed in the game. He would like to see an automatic ejection for fighting. That certainly does not fit the stereotype of a tough riding attackman who likes the physical part of the game.

So what about life adjustments, I asked. "Oh yeah, there were those." he answered. Other than the problems every kid going away to college faces in being "free" to go out and party instead of staying home and studying, he had a few tough ones. Going to an Ivy League school where students typically come from a wealthy background wasn't easy for someone who describes his group of friends as the "artsy types". A lot of the kids from the upper class families worried about their social status and were into making appearances. Sean didn't feel like he fit into that scene. He also felt like he didn't fit in at times in the locker room. He is quick to point out that it isn't like his teammates didn't welcome him but he still felt like an outsider sometimes when he would get some good natured jokes about his accent and being from Canada. He smiled when he said it made him feel like a foreigner even though he is an American citizen.

One of the best things that happened to him was the change in coaches, from Rich Moran to Dave Pietramala. Moran was a hard-nosed, old-school coach who had trouble relating to Sean, whereas Pietramala was "the best"." Pietro was very easy to talk with. That's probably one of the reasons why he was the coach of the year. Seeing how he admired his coach, I asked if he had any players he looked up to or tried to emulate when he was younger. He said there wasn't one particular player but that he loves to watch the Native players. He likes how they play with such love for the game and respect for it as a ceremonial rite. He even wrote a paper on the natives and their game for a class where he had to choose a religion to describe. He also said that their "flashy" style of play attracted him. He and his brother, Matt, played some games for the Six Nations Chiefs and the Akwesasne Thunder, both native based teams. When I forced him to name someone he admired, he said that he really enjoyed playing with Mike Benedict.

I noticed that he was an All-American last year and that even though a lot of seniors graduated he was left out of this year's pre-season All-America Team. I asked him if he felt like that was a snub. He admitted that it did but he just tried to turn it into a positive by using it as an incentive like being an underdog. He said he felt bad that Tracey Kelusky didn't get recognized in the All-America voting. Sean and his Minto Cup teammate, Gavin Prout were the only Canadians on the All-America Team. Their numbers were strikingly similar, too. Sean had 44 goals and 16 assists in 13 regular season games and one playoff game. Gavin had 41 goals and 12 assists in 13 regular season games and one playoff game.

The playoff game they lost brought up the topic of championships. I asked him which meant more, the Minto Cup or the NCAA Championship. He had no problem answering that one. He said that the Minto Cup or the Mann Cup meant more than the NCAA or NLL Championships for the simple reason that they are titles that are earned through a seven game series not just one game. His opinion seemed very objective.

He took a job in New York City putting to use the civil engineering degree he earned. The talk of a career had me asking him if he was looking forward to being drafted. He was. I asked, "If you had your choice of teams to play for who would it be?" He answered, "Philadelphia!" I also asked him if he had the first pick whom would he take. He said, "It would be hard to pass up Tracey Kelusky." He was also impressed with Jeff Ratcliffe from UMBC and said he'd like to see who was the top kid coming out of Junior this year.

He's another one of those guys emerging from an area that you might not expect to produce top-notch players. Kaleb Toth from Calgary, Casey Zaph from Regina, and David Morrow from Michigan are all good examples. Remember when the Gaits were thought of that way at Syracuse because they were from Victoria? Now that's funny! Anyway, Sean is a sure-fire first rounder. He can play both games, knows what it is to win, has a lot of character, has shown he can step up to the plate in big games, has size (6'0", 210 lbs.) and toughness, and is in love with the game.