Dave Pietramala has stomped back into town, seeking to restore the luster of his alma mater's lacrosse program while bringing with him a chunk of history.
A storied player in the sport, Pietramala accepted the head coaching job at Johns Hopkins a month ago and seems intent on putting a little grit into the Blue Jays.
Hopkins alumni must think back more than a decade to recall the school's last national championship, but Pietramala has a solid reminder of the program's glory days.
As a sophomore defenseman in 1987, he saved a 2-inch circular tuft of grass from Rutgers Stadium, his only keepsake from the day the Blue Jays celebrated their NCAA-record seventh and last title. He put the brown clump of sod in a glass to display in his house.
That's Petro, a man as uncomplicated as his nickname.
He's still the straight-talking guy who grew up in the middle-class Long Island town of Hicksville, N.Y. He's still the same defenseman who redefined the position by relishing bone-crunching body checks as much as game-saving takeaways. He's still the fiery leader who relies on his tenacious approach to achieve what he wants.
It's an in-your-face style that sometimes can be misunderstood, especially because the bellowing voice resonates from a man who stands 6 feet 4.
Pietramala will scream when correcting mistakes. He'll scream when congratulating his team. He's been known to test his players by running practices like a boot camp. He's been known to test his players by simply running them.
In three years at Cornell, his authoritative demeanor scared away enough players to field another team and turned off some recruits.
Pietramala, though, came up with a core of committed players that elevated the once-struggling Big Red into the top 10 while helping him become last season's Coach of the Year in Division I.
Last week, Pietramala started his search for his first recruiting class at Hopkins, watching nearly 400 high school players from the sideline at the Top 205 camp at Loyola College.
Wearing a gray Blue Jays T-shirt, he dissected the action and scribbled on his clipboard when a player hustled after a ground ball while tired, made an unselfish pass, or high-fived a teammate after he scored.
He usually contacts recruits weekly on the phone and hand-writes lengthy letters. However, since the recruiting season opened July 1 - less than a month after he was hired at Hopkins - Pietramala has been working on the fly this summer. He sent out typed letters.
