He Let Me Live

Daily Letter · Mindset Operating System · 8:42 PM

TRIVIA | Canadian Indoor Lacrosse

Start here. Answer at the bottom.

He grew up in Calgary. Won three Minto Cups as a junior. Chose the University of Denver over the NLL Draft. Set the NCAA single-season record for groundballs — 194 in one year. Entered the professional game and became the NLL's all-time leader in regular season faceoff wins. Won two World Championship gold medals representing Canada. Named World Championship MVP in 2006. When his playing career ended he went home and built a coaching organization from scratch to grow the game in the city that made him.

A personal note, in 2010 I mistakenly cross-checked this man in the neck during practice. He was the enforcer and Assistant Captain of our team at the time. What followed next almost resulted in my head being separated from my shoulders. Fully deserved. Who is he?

FIELD REPORT | Go Play Ball On A Wall

Dr. Seuss said it before any coach did.

Or try going outside to play ball on a wall.

Read that again, not as a children's book line but as a philosophy. Everything about the game that matters most started there. Not in a showcase. Not in a film session. Not in a recruiting conversation. At a wall. Alone. With a ball and a stick and whatever you were carrying that day.

There is something that happens in those moments that no program can manufacture for you. The repetition becomes meditative. The wall becomes a mirror. You start to understand your own mechanics, not because a coach told you what to look for but because you stayed long enough and paid close enough attention to feel the difference between a rep that was right and one that was not.

That is where the game actually teaches you something. Not the scoreboard. The wall.

I think about this when I am coaching now. The players who have the most feel for the game, the ones who read a play a beat ahead of everyone else, who make the difficult look unhurried, whose hands are clean in traffic — almost all of them have a history with the wall. Late nights. Early mornings. Sessions nobody organized and nobody witnessed. Just them and the ball and the slow accumulation of something that would not show up until it needed to.

The game was never complicated at the beginning. It was just movement and repetition and the specific joy of getting better at something that asked something of you.

We complicate it later. Rankings. Exposure. Showcases. Social media graphics. Recruiting timelines that start before a kid is old enough to understand what they are being recruited for.

The wall does not care about any of that. It just gives back what you give it.

Get outside. Play ball on a wall. Stay until you feel it. Then stay a little longer.

That has always been the whole thing.

MINDSET OS | Four Things. Every Day.

Win these four battles before anything else:

Physical | move your body. Not for aesthetics. For the base of everything. The pyramid does not stand without it.

Mental | read something. Anything that makes you think differently about one thing you thought you already understood.

Spiritual | find one thing today that is genuinely worth being grateful for. Not performed gratitude. A real one.

Self-reflection | write it down. What happened today. What you did well. What you would do differently. Two minutes. That is all it takes.

These are not complicated. That is the point. The people who do simple things consistently, who value themselves enough to show up for the basics every single day, build something that the people chasing complexity never quite reach.

Stay calm. Speak less. Observe more. Move in silence.

The wall teaches all of it if you let it.

TRIVIA ANSWER | Canadian Indoor Lacrosse

Geoff Snider. NLL all-time leader in regular season faceoff wins with 2,468. Three Minto Cup championships. Two World Championship gold medals. World Championship MVP 2006. University of Denver pioneer. Founder and CEO of ELEV8 Lacrosse in Calgary — building the game in the city that built him.

When asked about his most memorable NLL moment he said — "My last game in Calgary. The crowd was incredible. I valued and appreciated being in that moment at that time with guys and people I cared about. You never know when your time is up."

The game was always a conduit. He understood that before anyone asked him to.

And for what it is worth, he graciously let me keep my head attached in 2010. Still grateful for that.

ON ROTATION | What's Playing

Some tracks do not need words. The feeling is already there.

This week's listen: Sabrosa | Beastie Boys, Ill Communication (1994)

Three kids from New York who spent twelve years becoming one of the most genre-defiant acts in the history of recorded music. Ill Communication debuted number one on the Billboard 200 in June 1994. Sabrosa is a jazz-funk instrumental — live musicianship folded into hip hop in a way that had no category and did not need one. Three and a half minutes that sounds exactly like what it feels like to be fully inside a game — moving, reading, responding, everything working at once without thinking about any of it.

Put this on before a wall ball session. You will feel it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kyle Smedley is the founder of Harbor Lane Holdings, building at the intersection of sport, people, and capital.

Career stops include Events.com, Tourmaline Builders, Lombardi Contracting Corporation, and DPR Construction. Today he leads Atticus Lacrosse Company, working alongside Mad Dog Lacrosse and Ravenscroft School, and Harbor Lane Company, operating across real estate, private equity, and talent placement.

Field & Fathom goes out every night at 8:42 PM.

Reach out directly: [email protected]

Until tomorrow,

Kyle Founder · Harbor Lane Holdings · Atticus Lacrosse Company

Field & Fathom · Harbor Lane Holdings · Daily

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