Welcome to Rodney’s Rundown. “Unfiltered takes and real conversations.”
More Than Championships: What Mars Lacrosse Has Given Our Community
But as I watched from the field, my mind wasn’t on the trophy.
It was on the journey.
As a former youth coach and father, I’ve learned that championships are funny things. Mars let a couple slip through their fingers. Years from now, most people won’t remember the final score. They will forget who scored the winning goal or who made the biggest save. The banner will eventually fade.
What lasts are the moments.
I thought about the little boys who first picked up a lacrosse stick on a chilly spring evening. The nervous first practices. The countless rides to tournaments. Triple checking to make sure we had the equipment and sticks. The weekends parents spent in sideline chairs. The muddy uniforms thrown into washing machines. The summer workouts when nobody was watching.
I thought about parents sacrificing vacations, coaches giving up evenings and weekends with their own families, and players choosing discipline over excuses.
Those are the things that build champions.
The Mars boys lacrosse program has become one of the best in Pennsylvania, playing in five out of the last six State Championship games will do that to a program, but its true success isn’t measured in state titles. It’s measured in young men.
Over the years, this program has taught accountability, resilience, leadership, integrity, and teamwork. It has taught players how to handle adversity when they’re losing and humility when they’re winning. It has taught them success comes from commitment to something bigger than themselves. The name on the front of the jersey being more important than the name on the back.
Lacrosse is a team game. Individually we are strong but collectively we are powerful.
Those lessons will serve them far longer than lacrosse ever will.
If you are coachable then you are employable.
As parents, we spend so much time worrying about our children growing up. Then one day you look down the sideline and realize that the little boy who needed help tying his cleats is now a confident young man leading his teammates in the biggest game of his life.
That realization hits harder than any championship celebration.
This title belongs to the players whose names fill the roster today. But it also belongs to every player who wore the Mars jersey before them. The original 43 boys who took a chance on a new sport. The boys who played in past state title games. Every youth coach who taught the fundamentals. Every volunteer who lined fields. Every parent who packed snacks, drove carpools, and cheered through wins and losses.
Programs like this aren’t built in a season.
They’re built over generations. They are built from a casual discussion at a kitchen table between a husband and wife.
What makes Mars special is that lacrosse here has become a family. Older players return to mentor younger ones. Youth players wear varsity jerseys with pride and dream about their turn someday. The community rallies around these teams because they represent something larger than sports.
They represent us.
Watching the championship team celebrate, I couldn’t help but feel grateful. Grateful for the coaches who continue to invest in these young men. Grateful for the families who support them. Grateful for the friendships formed on buses, practice fields, backyards, and locker rooms.
Most of all, I’m grateful for the memories.
Because one day these players will leave Mars. They’ll become husbands, fathers, business leaders, teachers, doctors, and coaches themselves. They’ll build lives far beyond a lacrosse field.
And when they gather years from now, they’ll certainly talk about winning a state championship.
They’ll talk about their teammates.
They’ll talk about the bus rides.
They’ll talk about the laughter, the struggles, the lessons, and the bond they shared. The journey.
That’s when they will realize the greatest thing they won wasn’t a trophy.
It was each other. All the young men that pulled on that uniform.
Congratulations to the Mars Fightin’ Planets, who overcame adversity this year, PIAA State Champions once again.
The title is remarkable.
The legacy is even greater.
The Origin
Lacrosse is North America’s oldest team sport, dating back over 1,000 years. Native Americans invented lacrosse as the ‘Creator’s Game’ to help settle disputes, resolve conflicts and train warriors. It taught life lessons.
Every good story has a beginning. An origin.
The beginning for lacrosse at Mars began from a simple conversation between a husband and wife at their dinner table.
The Mars Varsity Boys Lacrosse origin can be traced back to 2009 when the Mars Lacrosse Youth Program began and was just an idea. An idea founded by Vince Grieco, to bring Mars Alien Attack to 3rd and 4th graders. The program started with 43 players making up two boy’s teams. 43 boys trusted in a new sport that has since grown into a massive consistent pipeline that has fueled the high school’s historic WPIAL dynasty.
A Big Why
Vince, the son of two hard-working Italian immigrants, was already heavily involved in the Mars wrestling program. He saw an opportunity to use sports to teach young boys life lessons.
“I was a big believer that we should use sports as an opportunity to teach life lessons,” explained Vince Grieco. “Growing up that was instilled in me, particularly by my wrestling coach.”
His high school wrestling coach made a huge impact on Vince in terms of reinforcing his parent’s message of working hard.
“I realized that parents need help,” Grieco explained. “Coaches have a special opportunity to positively impact a child’s life. I’m a product of that.”
Parents need help. “Our kids often dismiss a lot of things that parents say. Coaches have an opportunity to make an impact and fill that gap.” Grieco said.
“I heard a great quote years ago. Parents and coaches both watch a game through a funnel. When parents watch it, they watch it through the wide end focusing on their kid. A coach watches the game with the funnel turned the other way looking at the big picture,” explained coach Grieco.
In 2008, Grieco used ‘The Last Lecture’ by Carnegie Mellon Professor Dr. Randy Pausch to not only address the Mars School Board but to help build the philosophy and overall culture of Alien Attack Lacrosse.
Sitting in a quiet booth in Arnie’s at Treesdale Country Club, Vince read to me an excerpt from ‘The Last Lecture’ entitled the ‘Head Fake’ that he also read to the Mars School Board in 2009.
The ‘head fake’ refers to the powerful idea of indirect learning. Teaching students, players, and colleagues’ important life lessons while they think that they are playing or learning something else. Dr. Pausch used his ALICE educational software project to teach his students complex computer programming while they thought that they were simply having fun making movies and video games.
Coach Grieco and his other coaches used this ‘head fake’ to teach their players life lessons of teamwork, respect, perseverance, and sportsmanship through the value of hard work and the ability to deal with adversity while the kids had fun learning the game of lacrosse.
A small ‘why’, was that he wanted his son Anthony to learn to play lacrosse, but he couldn’t play at Pine-Richland because they lived outside of the district. Grieco, who played lacrosse in college at St. Vincent took this as motivation to ask his wife Cathy if he could start the Mars Youth Program.
Biggest Challenges to Launch
Numbers. Numbers play a key role in any sport. Gaining the interest of kids to learn, have fun, want to practice, and stick with it. Early on, Grieco knew the importance that marketing played in any successful business or organization. He used good old fashion ingenuity to use his target audience to help create an iconic logo by running a contest with Mars High School Art students to draw ideas. He then took the high school created Art projects to the 3rd and 4th graders to have them pick and choose what art they liked. This imaginative approach helped to drive interest in the students that would initially make up the first two teams.
“I tried as much as possible to approach this as a business,” Grieco explained. “Kids were an objective and being able to raise money by selling apparel. If you have a really cool logo, kids are going to love it.”
Vince took the ideas that were generated from the kids along with a mini figurine to an advertising agency artist friend named, Andy to create Andy the Alien. He developed the character on the Mars ‘outer space’ theme and the ‘warriors’ of the game of lacrosse.
Some of the high school art students then took the completed rendition back to the 3rd and 4th grade students for a unanimous vote. The fierce and friendly character ‘Andy the Alien’ was unveiled at the very first Mars Youth Lacrosse practice.
Anthony Grieco, Brendan and Andrew Moyer were the first three boys to sign up for the program.
Gaining a field to practice on was a huge obstacle because at the time Mars didn’t have many rectangle fields. The soccer fields were privately owned by the Mars Youth Home. He was able to secure one of the fields for the first season to play all of their home games and where they practiced. A practice tradition is that the teams practiced together as one organization even though they played games separately.
In 2010, the second year of the program, they moved to the Mars Athletic Complex (MAC). That was a big move to elevate the program and to attract new players. Numbers.
“Rodney, that was a huge move in elevating our program. We didn’t have to worry about younger brothers and sisters running onto three-degree road. The other youth sports didn’t want to pay to have access to the MAC,” Grieco explained. “We felt that it was very reasonable, safe, gave us access to the concession stand, restrooms, and a scoreboard. They became a great partner to us.”
The Mars Youth Lacrosse Association invested in their coaches by paying for their training through the US Lacrosse Head Coach Training Program that were held at the Pittsburgh Steelers training facility on the South Side.
Jimmy Brown, who joined as the head coach of the 2nd team, brought fun and laughter to the kids learning how to properly play lacrosse. ‘Head Fake’
“Jimmy and I each took a team that first year with a ton of assistant coaches. We had 15,” explained Grieco. “We positively coached the kids and the other coaches, hoping to build on our early success. It worked our numbers rapidly grew. We expanded to 5th and 6th grade teams and 7th and 8th grade and created a summer travel program.”
“Over a period of a few years, we demonstrated to the school board of our consistent growth and interest to where they added a high school team in 2013.” Grieco said.
Bob Marcoux, who had three daughters joined the youth coaching staff. He told Vince that he was given the greenlight to help do something with the boy’s program.
“He told me, Vince, I don’t care what you need me to do, I just want to help in some capacity,” Grieco explained his initial conversation with Marcoux at a North Fields neighborhood block party.
Building a Culture
The Mars Youth Lacrosse Associations board was constructed of individual people, who shared a mindset that favored the entire program and not just their child. Brian Moyer, Andrew and Brendan’s father. Kristi Thompson, who became the program mom in a sense. Jim Ford, who was the initial treasurer.
“I think a lot of organizations people on the board our parents of top players and they design their programs primarily around their best players,” explained Grieco. “We didn’t want that. We wanted some of the people on our own board that their kid might not have been a superstar but brought great perspective and decision-making that favored the program first and not individual players.”
Jimmy Brown was the key coach that structured practices and drills to emphasize overall player development and game enjoyment. Creating an environment where it was okay to make mistakes.
“We told the kids that it is okay to make mistakes. You’re not going to improve unless you make mistakes. The key is to learn from them.” Grieco explained.
Although, the culture took a few years to develop, it was grounded in a core belief of a code of ethics that centered on values and life lessons. The order was specifically tailored to the importance of the value at the youth level.
“In my opinion, the Mars youth program’s biggest accomplishment wasn’t teaching us the game of lacrosse. It was teaching all of us to be great teammates and to not play for yourself but to play for each other,” 2024 Mars alum Dylan Phillips explained.
The first core value was safety. The players were taught the value of safety, taking care of each other through specific examples of how to play safe.
The second core value was sportsmanship. “We taught our kids to be ethical.” Grieco explained. “We would ask our kids if it’s not a penalty if the ref doesn’t see it or doesn’t throw a flag? A lot of them would say yes. We would say wrong. You need to do the right thing even when nobody is watching.”
The third core value was to have fun. Having fun and enjoying the game and practices help keep the kids interested and helped to grow the numbers.
“We didn’t have a lot of kids quit the sport like we saw from other programs.” Grieco said.
The fourth core value was learning and empowerment. The players were developed through essential drills of learning the game of lacrosse, working on their lacrosse IQ and stick handling skills.
“The Mars youth program taught me how to be a team player and developed me so I could be prepared to play with guys who had also gone through the program,” explained 2022 alum Austin Cote. “It created a lot of chemistry.”
The fifth core value was success. “We talked to the kids about the importance of winning and having success, but not at the expense of our other core values, which are purposely listed ahead of success,” explained Grieco. “We want to win, but this gave us the opportunity to teach the kids life lessons of not winning at the cost of safety or sportsmanship. It isn’t fun to win if it is at the expense of someone getting hurt or displaying bad sportsmanship.”
“It’s more than just having a really good youth program,” coach Marcoux said. “It’s having the youth program with the right culture.”
“How close we got while playing together for so many years made it an easy transition to play off of everyone’s strengths at the high school level,” Mars 2022 alum Josh Seipp explained.
“The Mars Youth Program made me ready for High School because of how connected the programs are. High School players and coaches would often be at our practices to volunteer,” explained Mars 2024 alum Jack McKenzie. “The transition was much easier already knowing some of the team. It made the two programs feel more like one large community.”
Building a Future
The initial plan to grow the program for the future worked. Grieco met with the school board each year to show the year over year growth in the numbers and grades added. They even started a ‘Little Aliens’ program for 2nd graders. It was all about the numbers.
Grieco explained to the Mars School Board that their goal was to have a high school team in three to four years after they were able to demonstrate sustained growth.
“At the school board meetings, I tried to explain why sports matter and that we had a much bigger purpose,” Grieco explained. “Our first-year goal is to honestly not embarrass ourselves. We want to be competitive.”
The first year the teams didn’t embarrass themselves and both initial teams finished with a winning record. The 43 were paving the way.
After their second year, the idea of winning a WPIAL championship was firmly in place.
“We were winning most of our games against bigger schools like Mount Lebanon, North Allegheny, and Seneca Valley, who was a powerhouse at the time. Winning a WPIAL was firmly seated as a goal,” Grieco said with a smile. “I was told by a lot of my lacrosse friends at the time around the area from Lebo and Upper St. Clair that a team from Western Pennsylvania can’t win a State Championship. I told them that they were probably right, but that’s not going to stop us from making that a goal.”
Mars has achieved that goal twice.
The coaching staff worked on fundamentals at every practice. Ground balls, different dodges, footwork, positioning, off the ball movement and overall lacrosse IQ.
A key example of fundamentals is when going for ground balls teaching players to scoop them with two butts down, their butt and the butt of the stick. Players must drop their hips, bend their knees, and drive through the ball with both hands firmly on the shaft of the stick. Not to one-hand scooping, which leads to turnovers and lost possessions. Simply put, ground balls win games.
Other key fundamental coaching, not ignoring the players weak hand, not standing still when a player is off the ball, and excessive twirling of the stick after receiving a pass.
When you watch Mars play, the pace is relentless, the spacing is disciplined and they move the ball fast.
The focus on developing players, Marcoux believes, is a major part of why Mars has claimed the WPIAL trophy ten years in a row.
Players relying entirely on their dominant hand limits their field vision, passing angles, and makes them predictable to defenders. Mars coaches focus on elite stick handling skills that require equal comfort throwing, catching and shooting with both hands.
Since players often watch the ball instead of creating important spacing, which results in stagnant offense. Mars coaches focus on players moving without the ball, cutting, clearing through to bring defenders with them, and setting proper picks. These off the ball techniques help an offense to be less predictable and creates more successful offensive possessions.
Players, who constantly twirl their stick too much after catching a pass wastes precious seconds of offensive ball movement. Mars coaches teach players on being ready to accept a pass and move the ball focusing on making the quick, simple play.
The Mars Youth Association’s Program began in 2009 with fundamentals being a key foundation. In 2013, Mars Area High School Boys Lacrosse was started.
Building a Pipeline of Consistency
The Mars Youth Lacrosse Program is run completely different than other programs in the area. It is mandatory for all players to play all positions in a game except goalie. The players are rotated from defense, to midfielder, to attack not based on the score of the game but based on a specific system. During the Spring Season, the score doesn’t matter, the development of all the players matters the most. Additionally, at the younger youth levels, Mars doesn’t structure their teams on an A and B team system. They are equally drafted teams based on honest coach evaluations of the skill level of their players, who are ranked as A, B and C. Other area teams are structured as an A and C team because they put all their top players on one team and all their developmental players on another team. This causes an unbalance in talent, which then leads to kids quitting and trying other sports. Also, Mars structures every line on the field with an A, B, and C player. This challenges the B player to keep up with the A player and the C player to keep up with the B player enhancing their development.
“Our seasons are extremely well-balanced. The Spring Schedule is used to develop all our players, where every player gets equal playing time sometimes at the expense of the top players. However, the Summer Teams are where we have tryouts to have top players getting a chance to play with other top players in our program,” Grieco explained. “Rodney, you were a part of this structure and witnessed how it helped to keep our numbers high and kids having fun playing and learning.”
“Having the luxury of having enough kids and the infrastructure to offer our own summer travel program made it even easier to equally divide our kids during the spring program.” Grieco said. “In the spring, we focused more on player development and in the summer, it gave us the opportunity to put our better players together.”
Mars Varsity Hall of Fame Head Coach Bob Marcoux was an integral part of the youth program before moving onto the High School that has won 10 WPIAL Championships in a row and is the only Western Pennsylvania Lacrosse to win a State Title in 2022 and 2026.
“Our Youth Pipeline has been a major part of our success by providing us with high school ready players.” Head coach Bob Marcoux said.
This formula allowed Mars to compete at the youth and high school levels with schools that have two and three times the enrollment.
“I’m big believer that if you keep as many kids involved in the program as possible by the time, they get to the high school level then the coaches can pick from the cream of the crop.,” Grieco explained. “You never know what sixth grader is going be a better by the time they go to high school. Some other program kids are dismissed as B players in fourth grade, and they quit. Numbers were very important to us to have the greatest impact on the greatest number of kids. I think that it is a very important factor for winning at the next level.”
“Building that pipeline continues to bring in high-quality athletes.” Assistant Coach Kyle Savage said.
“Every year we get a fresh batch of kids that we know very well from the youth program and already have been kind of been exposed to our culture, the Mars culture,” Marcoux said. “It’s a big culture. It’s everybody.”
Mars plays with a team first attitude. The name on the front of the jersey is far more important than the name on the back.
It’s the Mars culture.
They learn early on that you pass to the open guy no matter who it is. They celebrate the assist far more than the goal. The coaches focus on ground balls, turnovers and passing.
It’s their culture.
Attack players focus relentlessly on ‘The Ride’, “If we can keep the ball on our side of the field, we are going to win a lot of games,” Grieco said.
The ‘Ride’ is when your team is off the ball in their offensive end and the attack players ride the other teams’ defenders with aggressive pressure on the clear to help prevent transition.
Building a High School Dynasty
Mars won its first WPIAL Championship at Highmark Stadium by defeating the Hampton Talbots 15-10.
Every spring for the last 10 years, The Fightin’ Planets have held the WPIAL trophy.
“It never, ever gets old,” Head Coach Bob Marcoux said.
Mars has beat the South Fayette Lions all eight times that the teams have played each other. They have beat the Lions four consecutive years in a row in the WPIAL class 2A championship game.
The last time that the Mars Fightin’ Planets lost a class 2A WPIAL Playoff Game was in 2016 against Canon Mac.
High School dynasties survive based on a strong feeder program. At Mars, that feeder program was being built in 2009 with third and fourth graders. Those original third graders lost in overtime in a state semi-final game against the Strath Haven Panthers from Wallingford, Pennsylvania in 2018.
Four years later, in 2022, Mars defeated Marple Newtown to win the only state title from a WPIAL boys or girls lacrosse team in state history. Now in 2026, the Mars Fightin’ Planets beat the Penncrest Lions 14-13 to win their second state title in six years.
“I was asked after the first state title game what I was thinking about seeing Mars holding the state championship trophy,” Grieco explained with watery eyes. “Rodney, I was thinking about the original 43 boys who took a chance on us and on a new sport. Those boys paved the way.”
“Hoisting the state trophy as a Western PA team felt so accomplishing considering we were the first to do it,” explained 2022 Mars alum Austin Cote. “Doing it with the guys that I grew up playing with was one of the best feelings ever.”
“I was proud of how we bounced back after getting beat the year before and became the first team from the west to win it,” Mars 2022 alum Wes Scurci said.
“We have embraced the mentality that if you eat, we all eat,” explained 2026 senior Grant Weaver. “That’s how Mars lacrosse should be played and we’re playing the right way.”
One state title is a Statement. Two is a Standard.
At Mars, the standard is the standard and all roads to the state championship game in western, PA run through our little town.
You never know what will happen from a conversation at a dinner table.
