The Keigler Prophecy
by Jac Coyne | Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff | Coyne Archive
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| Will Keigler is operating on the opposite side of
the field as his Hall of Fame father, which has allowed him to
make a name for himself at Washington & Lee. © Patrick Hinely |
As he stood in his kitchen amid the rattling plates, the
clanking glassware, and the protestations of his wife, a small
smile came across Tom Keigler's face. While it seemed like his
house might cave in around him, he was pleased. The cacophony meant
only one thing.
His eight-year-old son, Will, had taken off his lacrosse training
wheels.
What was once the soft, nearly inaudible bounce of a tennis ball
off the wood paneling on the side of the Keigler house was replaced
on that day by the jarring sound of the dense, rubber ball that is
standard issue on the playing fields of Timonium, Md., testing the
limits of the family structure.
When he went outside and rounded the corner to put a stop to the
barrage, Tom knew what he would find: his son, smiling, playing
wall ball with a big-boy ball and the side of his house in
splinters.
"When you get to around eight-years-old you don't want to throw the
tennis ball, you want to throw a lacrosse ball," said Will. "It
became an issue throwing the ball against the wood paneling because
it would actually break and chip. So we had to find different
venues."
As young Will shuffled off to the park to find another wall to
abuse, his parents, hands on hips, surveyed the damage to their
paneling. His mother wanted to have it fixed right away, but Tom
had different thoughts. Looking at the blistered surface, he didn't
see splintered and chipped wood.
He saw the passing of a torch.
"When I was growing up, I used to play wall ball and I dented our
gutter," said Tom. "After I went off to college, my mother wanted
to have the gutter replaced and my father said, ‘No, that
will be a reminder about how hard he worked to learn how to play
and we'll leave that gutter just how it is.' That's kind of how I
felt about the side of the house."
The shared lacrosse moment was special because it was bittersweet.
The joy that Tom had over his son embracing the sport was tempered
by the reality that the son would grow up playing in a very large
lacrosse shadow.
A four-time All-American at Washington & Lee University as a
defensman in the late 1970s when it was still Division I, a World
Team member in 1978, and an inductee into the National Lacrosse
Hall of Fame, Keigler was considered the premier long pole of his
generation. Jack Emmer, his coach at W&L, famously said, "Tom
is the best defenseman in the college game, it's as simple as
that...enjoy him fans, he's one in a million."
Not wanting those words ringing in Will's ears every time the
youngster stepped on the field, potentially draining any
gratification in the sport, the father kept his lacrosse
achievements out of view.
"I would never want him to feel that he had to live up to anything
I've accomplished," said Tom.
As a 10-year-old, Will accompanied his father to his Hall of Fame
induction, but it didn't register. There's dad on the stage,
holding a plaque; so what's for dinner? It wasn't until his junior
year in high school that Will punched his father's name into an
online search engine to see just what his father's
résumé looked like.
"As a kid growing up, I didn't know how good my dad was," said
Will. "He never would say that he was an All-American and played on
a World Team. It was something I hadn't seen before and it was
pretty amazing."
When Will saw all of the accolades he swelled with pride about his
father's accomplishments, but there was no intimidation about
fulfilling his father's legacy. During his formative lacrosse years
Will made a break from Tom's lacrosse path that erased any
oppressive expectations.
He picked up a short stick.
"The defensive side never really attracted me as much because I
wanted to score goals at an early age," said Will, who was a
standout at The Gilman School. "I wasn't a physically intimidating
type of player to play defense, so playing attack and midfield is
what attracted me."
Will hoped to pursue his dream of playing Division I lacrosse like
his father, but he was passed over by the programs he hoped to
impress, likely due to his slight build. It was disappointing to
come up short of his goal, but it opened up the possibility that he
could follow in his father's footsteps again.
That idea, however, didn't take right away.
"I didn't want to go to W&L because my dad went there and kind
of made his own name and I wanted to do my own thing," said
Will.
His father didn't press the issue. Will made his own choices about
where he wanted to visit and after weighing his options, to Tom's
mild surprise the son picked Washington & Lee.
"One of the reasons I was hands off was because I had modicum of
success there and I wanted him to be his own person," said Tom. "I
didn't want him to be in anyone's shadow, so I was kind of worried
about that. When he did decide to go there, I was secretly elated
because I had a chance to go back and there are still a lot of
people there that were there when I was. Plus, with him being an
attackman and me having been a defenseman, there is no
comparison."
Even though they honed their skills at different positions, many
people noticed the connection between the way the father and son
operated on the college lacrosse field. Gene McCabe, the Generals
head coach, uses the term ‘lacrosse IQ' when talking about
Will. McCabe thinks Will's is about as high as it gets - a trait
for which his father was also known.
"If you went back to Coach Emmer and asked him about Tom Keigler,
he'd say the same thing about his father," said McCabe. "It's
really like father, like son in terms of their innate instincts and
feel and understanding of the game."
It was during a two-game span near the end of last season when
Will, then a junior, showed his intelligence quotient. It started
in the overtime period of the ODAC championship game against
then-No. 1 Roanoke. After scooping up a loose ball off the opening
face-off of the extra session, Keigler was being ridden out of
bounds by a Maroon defender when he leaped into the air, caught the
referee's attention, and called for a timeout right in front of the
Roanoke bench.
"It's really remarkable what he did because honestly it's never
anything I coached him to do," said McCabe, still slightly in awe
nearly a year later. "He just instinctively did it. He's always in
the right place at the right time and making the right decision.
That was one of the smartest thing I've seen a player make."
As if to put an exclamation point on that play, Keigler made the
pass to Harry St. John just moments later that resulted in W&L
winning the conference title and punching its ticket to the NCAA
tournament. It was in the first game of the tourney against
FDU-Florham that Keigler again displayed his uncanny acumen for the
game.
Again faced with an overtime contest, Keigler ambled over to Tim
Skeen, the W&L player who would have the ball on the restart
after a timeout, informing Skeen that his defender had a tendency
to ball-watch. So if the primary option on the play drawn up by
McCabe - again St. John - wasn't available, keep an eye out.
With the FDU defense collapsing on St. John as the play was taking
shape, Keigler back-doored his defender and buried the feed from
Skeen to send the Generals on to the second round.
"He understands spacing and understands what's going to happen next
as the play develops," said his father. "I think that's his best
attribute. I don't think he's the fastest guy on the team, I don't
think he has the best shot and I don't think he's the best dodger,
but he really understands how the game unfolds and puts himself in
position to be successful."
It may be from innate instincts, it could come from playing the
game so long, or it could be part of the Keigler genome, but the
W&L senior has displayed a lacrosse acuity that will
undoubtedly keep him on the short list for national player of the
year.
Will knows he will never be a World Team player and he is unlikely
to make the Lacrosse Hall of Fame like his father, but he's just
fine with that. He is vital cog, both in terms of points and
leadership, on a team that has aspirations of making it even deeper
in the NCAA tourney.
More importantly to his father, Will has enjoyed the W&L
experience as much as he did. Will is so comfortable with his
father's former campus that the youngster has taken to calling his
father ‘Norm,' which was Tom Keigler's nickname while playing
with the Generals (his middle name is Norman).
Tom doesn't mind much because he's usually bursting with the kind
of pride only a father can have for a son.
"I'm in awe of what he's accomplished," said Tom Keigler. "He
probably would have left me in the dust."
If not in the dust, Will leaves his father on the side of the house
surrounded by the remnants of splintered and chipped wood
paneling.
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