The words started coming and they started sounding new.
Coach Lars Tiffany likes to check in individually with his players every few months. This spring, after offseason scrimmages and before the season opener against Colgate, Tiffany checked in again with sophomore midfielder Hudson Hausmann.
It morphed from a check-in to a call to action.
“Hey,” Tiffany said, in so many words, Hausmann remembers. “I know you can do more.”
Tiffany saw the higher gear hovering right in front of the player. He just wanted to figure out how to unlock it. How to crack open the bag of winds and unleash Hausmann. He thought out loud with Hausmann, asking what the player needed to make the leap — harder coaching? Coaching that angered him into reaching a new level?
Hausmann decided he needed none of that. He could figure it out. Tiffany had told him so.
“That [conversation] was a gentle push,” Hausmann said. “And I think that’s what allowed me to find what I’m doing now.”
What he is doing now, as a blistering short-stick defensive midfielder, is fueling No. 12 Virginia — playing stubborn defense, shepherding the clear and scoring five goals this season. And laying down punishing hits.
There was the one against Towson. The poor attacker looked like he’d charged into a steel clothesline, or rather the clothesline had hunted him down. His stick lolled at his side and the ball fluttered into no man’s land.
“He’s an absolute dawg,” senior defender John Schroter said after Virginia’s game against Notre Dame. “Crazy, huge hit running up the field. Love playing with him. He’s so fun to play with.”
Before Virginia turned its season around — before the four-game winning streak with the wins over then-No. 1 Notre Dame and then-No. 7 Duke — the Cavaliers struggled mightily. Especially Hausmann and the defense.
Virginia surrendered 18 goals against Richmond, and this was before Richmond became known as potentially the best team in the country. It prompted a minor inquest.
The defense sat down to talk. Were they going to be, they asked themselves, reactive or confrontational? Let the game come to them, or initiate the contact and the intensity, take it to the offense?
“We were kind of on our heels, waiting for them to make the move,” Hausmann said. “And that’s not how we want to be moving forward, whether it’s our guys being confrontational, getting gloves, making the first move.”
Confrontational? “I love that,” the former football defensive back says, after a childhood in football, hockey and lacrosse. There is no choice in those sports — only physicality.
“We need bruisers,” Hausmann said. “When I see an opportunity to make a play, I guess my eyes do light up.”
His eyes light up talking about anything to do with lacrosse. They go full C-3PO when the conversation swivels to the clearing game. He loves it so much he gets a little sheepish about all the screaming he does. At whoever has the ball. Give it to him.
It gets to him, and then he serves as a one-man clearing machine. Hausmann returned kicks in football, loving how he would get the ball, scan the field, then explode through the hole and shed tacklers. This is the same role.
When he got to Virginia, the coaches were not quite sure what to do with him. Offense or defense? So they split him in his first season of fall ball — two months with the defense, two with the offense.
They settled on offense come the spring, and he played the first three games there. But then-junior midfielder Joey Terenzi went down injured against Ohio State, and Hausmann, sitting in film Tuesday morning with the offense, got summoned to the defensive meeting instead.
He has stayed there since, building confidence in the role as his offensive confidence returns, too. Virginia under Tiffany loves transition, fawns over it, and that gives defensive midfielders opportunities to come down.
Hausmann, of course, wants to score goals. So he figured he would talk to graduate goalie Jake Marek. There is no one more attuned to the miniscule specificities of shooting than a goalie. Marek had some advice.
“When d-middies come down, goalies automatically think they’re shooting low,” Hausmann said.
That was the gist. He took the advice to heart, scoring a high rifle against Notre Dame. He did it the next week against Duke, and freshman attacker Brendan Millon, stationed toward the corner during the play, threw his hands on his head in amazement.
“I know I still have a lot more to do, and I think I know I can still have a lot greater impact,” Hausmann said. “Help this team in any way — that’s always been my biggest piece.”
He is doing it at the program he grew up loving. Why? No one has any idea why. Suddenly the kid from Greenwich, Conn., was wearing Virginia lacrosse shirts and hats. His parents do not even remember where the clothing came from, as if it just washed up on the front porch one day, on the tide of another national title celebration.
But they do know the two things that solidified their son’s love for the program.
The Brunswick School, his school from before middle school and through high school, once hosted a camp with Steele Stanwick and Virginia. Hausmann, clad in a Virginia lacrosse flat brim, was enthralled. There is still a picture from that visit, Hausmann and his little brother and a hero.
Then John Fox, another Brunswick School kid who used to hang out with Hausmann and his brother — give them lessons, drive them around, even pass down gear — went to Virginia and became a captain. That furthered his love for Virginia.
By high school, though, Hausmann had grown out of it, wanting a clear mind around the recruiting process. He committed as a junior to Brown. For a month, maybe two, he felt great about the decision.
Then something started gnawing at the back of his mind, growing louder and more insistent. He told no one for a few months even as they drummed at his brain, these thoughts of Virginia.
One day he wrote a paper for class — from what prompt, he does not remember. But the lacrosse dilemma spilled out. He started thinking more openly about his recruitment, and then began talking every couple weeks to associate head coach Kevin Cassese, not about lacrosse or the program. Hausmann already knew everything there was to know about the program. They talked about life.
A year after committing to Brown, Hausmann flipped his commitment to Virginia. It has led him here, to one final regular-season game Friday against Drexel and then to the ACC Tournament.
“I’m beyond excited,” Hausmann said. “The chance at a postseason is really exciting. And I also think, as a group, we know we have so much good lacrosse to be played, and I think we haven’t even shown our best stuff.”
After Virginia’s win against Utah, the one that launched the four-game winning streak, the last two left in the locker room were named Hudson Hausmann and Lars Tiffany. They were alone, just like in the office six weeks before.
Together they walked down the hill, to the postgame tailgate, talking about the game. Tiffany put an arm around Hausmann’s shoulders.
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