Dave Pietramala smiles when he hears the question. It's one he has heard before. They look at him - his big-barreled chest, his oak tree of a neck and his linebacker-thick arms - and just assume.
You played football growing up, didn't you?
No, sadly, Pietramala did not play high school football. It wasn't that he didn't want to, and it wasn't that his parents wouldn't let him. Quite the opposite. There simply was no football in his small world.
His tiny Catholic high school, St. Mary's in Hicksville, N.Y., couldn't afford the insurance, and so in the mid-1980s, a generation of broad-shouldered young men like Pietramala were steered to lacrosse and told to seek athletic glory scooping ground balls instead of wrestling running backs to the ground.
That unfortunate twist of fate still eats at Pietramala, but it also explains a lot about the man and the way he runs the Johns Hopkins lacrosse program. Watch, though, how he stands on the sideline Saturday as his Blue Jays take on Maryland at M&T Bank Stadium. Arms crossed and jaw clenched, he looks right at home on the gridiron. All due respect to lacrosse, but Pietramala is a football guy. There is an intensity in the way he carries himself, an intimidating snarl to almost every gesture.
The 41-year-old doesn't smile much, but if you mention he would seem more at home on the gridiron, a grin will spread across his face. He considers it a compliment. He doesn't miss playing lacrosse. But football? Yeah, maybe a little.
"I'm sure I would have loved it," Pietramala said during a recent afternoon, talking about football inside his office. "I'd love to go back and play. Sometimes, to be honest, I want to get out there right now."
This is Pietramala's ninth season as Hopkins head coach, and there are few surprises anymore about who he is. On the surface, he is as fierce a competitor as anyone in the sport. But hang around long enough and you'll see some vulnerability. His eyes were noticably red and puffy after last year's NCAA final. When he put his hand on Paul Rabil's shoulder in the post-game news conference, he looked like a father reaching out to comfort his son. Pietramala doesn't so much as wear his emotions on his sleeve as he does wear them all the way down to his shoelaces.
"I can't stand losing," he said. "I'm more scared to lose than I am excited to win. We lose, and it makes me sick to my stomach. My food doesn't taste good for the rest of the day."
