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A Trip To His Roots
by Brad | August 25, 2022

A Trip To His Roots

MVP International lacrosse coach visits Ireland for the first time
By David Driver, MVP Communications

WASHINGTON – The trip lived up to expectations for TJ Finnerty, a veteran girls lacrosse coach in Northern Virginia.

“I really can’t say what it was I expected but it could not have been any better,” says Finnerty, who returned from a trip to his Irish roots last weekend. “It was such an incredible experience. It was clean, it was very much a modern city with different accents.”

The MVP International girls team flew in and out of Dublin and took part in a Lacrosse Festival in Limerick.

“The trip was phenomenal. The girls went 9-0 in the Lacrosse Festival and won the Championship! While we were there, we were able to see the Cliff of Moher, do a walking tour of Dublin and Limerick, participate in a Gaelic games experience and we got to see the U21 USA Lacrosse team win the Gold Medal at the World Lacrosse Championships,” said Matt Wojciechowski, the Regional Enrollment Coordinator for MVP International.

MVP International was one of four lacrosse teams at the event.

“The competition was very different,” Finnerty said. “There was a mix of skills and abilities. We were certainly the team with the most experience and most ability. I think we learned pretty much after the first day we were the best team, the best of the four teams that were there.”

“But that doesn’t represent the entirety of the experience. I think we did a good job of talking to the girls that lacrosse is a vehicle for us as a tremendous window into the international experience,” he added. “The girls did a tremendous job of meshing with the girls from all of the teams. After the first game we had a gift exchange. We watched for 15 minutes as the girls spoke to one another where they were from and what they were looking for and what the experience was like. It was really neat to be part of the broader international lacrosse community.”

The title came against a team of women from Ireland.

“Some had played in the States. We had played that team in the very first game and had won by a really wide margin,” Finnerty said. “But because they are older and don’t practice together all of the time, they were there for the week and getting better all of the time. We knew it would be a different game in the championship and we were actually down by two goals in the first half 6-4. But then we scored nine straight and ended up winning 13-6.”

MVP International took part in an event held along with the World Championships for 21U men in Limerick.

“We saw pieces of seven or eight games. With the US men’s team, we saw three of their games,” Finnerty said. “We got to see the championship game, which was on Saturday evening.”

Finnerty figured that he would run into someone he knew since lacrosse can be a tight-knit group.

“I didn’t know who it would be, but I knew it would be somebody,” Finnerty said.

And that person turned out to be Skip Lichtfuss, who works for all teams with USA Lacrosse as a director and is based in the Baltimore area.

Both of them went to Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and played lacrosse there.

“He was a legend; he was a three-time All-American,” Finnerty said. “He is a Hall of Famer and played on the US national team a couple of times. We talked for about a half hour.”

 

MVP International girls lacrosse coach TJ Finnerty (left) was able to meet fellow Washington & Lee lacrosse alum
Skip Lichtfuss (right) during a major event in Ireland in August. The MVP team was made of girls from several schools
in Northern Virginia and they went 9-0 to win the title.

 

Thanks to that connection, MVP International got a photo of their team with the USA mens’ squad.

The MVP roster: middies Natalie Anderson and Madelyn Arca; attack Summer Eastman, Erin Soule, Ann Suddarth, Claire Varley, Mia Young, Julia Lundy, Emma Lundy, and Ashlynn Maher; defenders Caleigh Jones and Ellen Suddarth; and goalies Bristol Sine and Hannah Smith.

They represent these Northern Virginia high schools: Lake Braddock (five players), Robinson (four), Bishop O’Connell (three), and one each from West Springfield and W.T. Woodson.

Finnerty shared coaching duties in Ireland with Tim Prosser, the head coach at Robinson High in Virginia. Much of the legwork before the trip was done by Anthony Neville, who is from the Cork area of Ireland and has been involved in lacrosse and hosting trips for several years.

Besides lacrosse, the trip was a personal one for Finnerty.

He grew up in an Irish-Catholic family in upstate New York and nearly all of his extended family that was born in the United States, from uncles and aunts, had been to Ireland before for a visit.

But this was the first visit to Europe for Finnerty, who is the new girls’ lacrosse coach at the Flint Hill School in Fairfax County, Virginia.

His great-grandparents were born in Ireland and his roots stretch to County Cork there.

“My wife, Renee, and I didn’t get a chance to go down to Cork but we did meet many people from Cork,” Finnerty said. “I thought the trip was overall was a great mix of free time and lacrosse time and then organized activities. It was awesome.”

 

Finnerty and his wife, Renee, enjoyed their time in Ireland with the MVP International lacrosse team.

 

Finnerty enjoyed finding out about the Gaelic Games. MVP International was able to see a hurling event in a village in Limerick.

“It was the experience of a lifetime,” he said. “It was so awesome to see how different things were. The people from both towns were covered around the pitch for the pride of their town and how much it means to them.”

Editor’s note: David Driver is the former sports editor of papers in Arlington and Harrisonburg in Virginia and worked for papers in Burke and Springfield; he was in Ireland in March and interviewed American basketball players and met with Neville. His book “Hoop Dreams In Europe: Americans Building Basketball Careers In Europe,” was published in March and is available on Amazon and at his website – www.daytondavid.com.

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