Ex-UConn Head Coach Battles Cancer

January 10th, 2010 Posted in Connecticut Lacrosse, UConn Lacrosse

InsideLacrosse.com

Jack McGetrick, now the head coach at Division 1 Bellermine, was also the Head Coach of UConn’s Club Lacrosse team in the early nineties.  His UConn teams were very successful, but equally important was the fact that he was greatly admired by the players he coached.  After UConn he was hired to coach Hartford’s varsity squad, where he had 11 successful years.  Inside Lacrosse recently chronicled his battle with prostate cancer.

Spend a few minutes going over the stories that folks around the game of lacrosse will tell you about Jack McGetrick, and you’ll get the impression that the Bellarmine head coach is a cross between Paul Bunyan, Brodie Merrill, Dr. Phil and Bill Brasky.

There’s the tales of his playing career at Cortland, where he came in as an elite attackman, became an All-American defenseman and was a captain of the soccer team in his spare time. Then you hear about how he used to race his players at the University of Hartford - where he earned the 1997 NCAA Coach of the Year award despite being a part-time college coach and full time high school teacher a half hour away - in a 3-miler every fall, and didn’t lose to the guys 20-years his junior until a former cross-country star joined his team. Or players talking about his open door and hanging out in his basement while he rode an elliptical bike and broke down film with them for hours while his kids did homework nearby.

He played college ball with Bill Tierney and Dave Urick under Jack Emmer for the Red Dragons, was drafted by the professional Box League Montreal Quebecois in 1976, ran a sub-3:00 time in the Boston Marathon AND won the 35-40 age group at the Cape Cod Ironman in the same year.

With that larger-than-life yet endearing personality, it was a shock last month when the lacrosse world found out at the IMLCA Convention that McGetrick had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

“I’m determined to beat this,” says McGetrick, who has not yet missed a practice and doesn’t intend to - he’s too excited about the Knight’s first ECAC season to let his chemotherapy keep him off the sidelines.

“The [chemo] knocked me on my rear end at first, but I’m still able to function. They tell me its incurable, but I’m planning on getting it into remission and keeping it there.”

Read More