Lacrosse pro returns to Eisenhower High School for youth camp

SHELBY TOWNSHIP/UTICA — It’s been a full-circle moment for Shelby Township native Charlie Hayes.

For the past two years, Hayes has made the trip back to the Utica Community Schools district to work with local lacrosse players at a middle school and high school lacrosse camp.

On July 19 at Utica High School’s Swinehart Stadium, Hayes ran the Utica-Eisenhower Boys Lacrosse Camp, which was mostly composed of Eisenhower’s varsity lacrosse squad, where Hayes played all four years of varsity lacrosse before graduating in 2014. Eisenhower has since unified with Utica High School to form one lacrosse program.

“Anytime I can come back and help out my alma mater, especially with the sport of lacrosse, it’s a fun time,” Hayes said.

Hayes, who was a two-time all-state honoree in lacrosse at Eisenhower, ran various defensive, offensive, midfield and goalie drills throughout the three-hour camp, which also focused on the fundamentals of the game and game situations.

Attendees also went one-on-one as an attacker attempted to beat a defender and score on a goalie.

The players were all smiles and trash talk ensued each time one got the better of the other, and players were begging for another shot to go one-on-one with their friends. The middle schoolers got their chances with the upperclassmen, and the middle schoolers held their own.

There was a display of physicality and finesse with each drill, and Hayes said the mix of skill sets is part of the reason he believes lacrosse has grown in popularity.

“I think the sport of lacrosse is honestly a great mix of all sports,” Hayes said. “I grew up playing football, basketball and lacrosse in high school, and lacrosse is really a mix of all sports. It’s physical like football, it’s physical like hockey, and in the half field, offense and defense is a lot similar to basketball, so I think that’s what’s so fun and intriguing about the sport. It’s got a little bit of everything in it, and I think that’s what draws a lot of people to the game nowadays.”

Hayes was a multisport athlete at Eisenhower, earning all-league honors in basketball as a sophomore and all-county honors and team MVP honors in football his senior season. Hayes led Eisenhower to three straight Macomb Area Conference-Red titles in lacrosse before continuing his career collegiately at University of Detroit Mercy from 2015 to 2018, where he led the Titans lacrosse program to three postseason trips, a school record in wins, its first two winning seasons since the program’s inception in 2009, and one Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship appearance in 2018.

Hayes currently serves as an assistant coach on the men’s lacrosse team at Detroit Mercy, and Eisenhower lacrosse coach Ryan Swiatkowski, who assisted Hayes with the camp, said Hayes is someone who helps grow the popularity of the game locally.

“Especially someone that’s coaching DI lacrosse and playing professional, it really helps having someone that can come in and bring more people to come in and teach someone things that I don’t know myself,” Swiatkowski said. Swiatkowski now coaches the unified Utica and Eisenhower team.

Hayes ended his collegiate season in 2018 with team highs in caused turnovers (34) and ground balls (83) and led the MAAC with 2.13 caused turnovers per game before joining the Denver Outlaws of Major League Lacrosse in 2019, leading the team to the championship game in his first two seasons.

Major League Lacrosse then merged with the Premier Lacrosse League, where Hayes now plays with Waterdogs Lacrosse Club, with whom he won a championship last season. Hayes currently has three points and seven ground balls this season in five games as the Waterdogs are tied for second in the league.

“We won the championship last year, so we brought a lot of our guys back,” Hayes said. “We had two guys retire, which were big parts of our team, but I think we brought back all of our team outside of two returning guys. We got a really good locker room. I think that’s one thing we always talk about with the Waterdogs. We might not have the most popular names and all that kind of stuff, but we got a good team that works together well in the locker room.”

As for Utica/Eisenhower Unified as they head into the 2023-24 season, it’s a tough ask to play in the MAC-Red with a team that is still trying to figure things out numbers-wise.

The team fought hard down the stretch, and it will look to carry that intensity with a pair of returning all-state honorable mentions in junior midfielder Luke Mastronardi and junior goalie Matthew Engelhardt.

The unified squad is hoping to have a full junior varsity and varsity team this season after having 36 players combined in the program, and it dreams of returning to some normalcy in the near future.

“In a few years, we’re hoping to finally develop it into where it was before, where we have 80 kids to 70 kids for all four years,” Swiatkowski said.