West Genesee grad Joe Fletcher stars for Loyola as nation's top defenseman

Joe Fletcher Loyola

Loyola's Joe Fletcher, a West Genesee grad, is only the second defenseman to be named a finalist for the Tewaaraton Award in the honor's 14-year history.

(Larry French | Loyola Athletics)

Baltimore — It's more than an hour before a team meeting on a recent afternoon, and Loyola defenseman Joe Fletcher is scanning video, looking for any extra nuances he can find as the Greyhounds prepare to face Johns Hopkins.

A little later, he will retreat to the locker room. And chances are, at some point, he'll crack open a book. Final exams, after all, are right around the corner.

"I'm always trying to find something to do," Fletcher said. "I try not to waste time."

Fletcher, a West Genesee High School product, is instead a model of efficiency. It's especially true of his on-field work, where his chances of maintaining a low-profile vanished long ago.

He's one of 30 players (and the only current college player) to make the cut for the U.S. national team's roster for the world championships later this year in Denver. Thursday, he was named one of five finalists for the Tewaaraton Award, just the second close defenseman in the award's 14-year history to earn such an honor.

Fletcher was a crucial piece of Loyola's 2012 national championship team, and should the third-seeded Greyhounds (15-1) make another deep run this month, he will surely have a major influence.

He's already contained the likes of John Glesener (Army), Wells Stanwick (Johns Hopkins) and fellow Tewaaraton finalist Jordan Wolf (Duke) this season. Saturday, with Albany (11-5) paying a visit to the Ridley Athletic Complex, he is expected to mark the ultra-creative Lyle Thompson.

If anyone is capable of slowing down the Great Danes' star, it is the studious Fletcher, who finds something to do with any free moment, including on bus rides home after games when most teammates would rather unwind or nod off.

"It never stops with him," said defenseman Pat Frazier, who sits next to Fletcher on the team bus on road trips. "I feel bad when he pulls out accounting homework and I'm just playing video games on my computer. I'm like, 'Are you really going to do that? All right, I'll find something to do.'"

The byproduct of Fletcher's restlessness is an unusual bit of stardom. When a defenseman becomes a household name, it is usually because of ferocious checks and a hulking presence.

At 6-foot-3 and 190 pounds, Fletcher doesn't fit that stereotype. No matter. He's still the best defenseman in the college game.

"He's right up my alley," said Johns Hopkins coach Dave Pietramala, who is also an assistant for the national team. "He's vanilla, all substance and no flash. Some people might take that as a criticism, but around here we take it as a compliment. We don't have to chase or check or knock people over. Joe's a guy who is a classic case of you can't judge a book by its cover. He doesn't look physical, and when he runs around he doesn't look that athletic. But the bottom line is he's a guy that gets the job done."

'He's just Fletch'

Fletcher picked Loyola over Cornell, a product of both solid recruiting connections and a bit of serendipity. Former Loyola assistant Dan Chemotti, now the coach at Richmond, is a West Genesee grad who was in town to recruit defenseman Joe Fazio. Chemotti didn't land Fazio (he went to Syracuse) but still discovered something valuable.

There was little doubt Fletcher would be a useful piece at Loyola. He was an excellent communicator (something Fletcher's national team experience has further amplified) and leader, as well as a fine off-ball player with superb stick skills. As a freshman, he earned a role on the Greyhound's man-down unit and moved into the starting lineup the next year.

That coincided with Loyola's title run, a four-game stretch during which the Greyhounds yielded just 22 goals. Fletcher was especially dominant, not surrendering a point to the man he primarily covered in either of Loyola's championship weekend games.

"The part of his game that really changed was becoming the best cover defenseman in the country," Loyola defensive coordinator Matt Dwan said. "That part was probably the part where I was thinking of him as a cover-2 or -3 type of defenseman where he could keep getting better."

That projection was partially right. Fletcher kept getting better and better, kept drawing high-profile assignments.

And he kept denying excellent players opportunities to do much of anything besides spray bad shots around the cage. Perhaps the performance most reflective of Fletcher's style came in March, when Glesener scored two goals (one in transition) on 22 shots while Fletcher chased him around up top.

"He's just constantly on your hips," said Loyola attackman Justin Ward, another three-year starter. "He's in your gloves. He's a gnat. He's a guy who is simply trying to disrupt what you're trying to do that's productive."

And he also found ways to accentuate the rest of Loyola's stout defense, which featured arguably the sport's most explosive defensive midfield in 2012 and 2013 and also includes veteran goalie Jack Runkel.

"One of the things I think coaches who observe him agree is that he makes others around him better and that's a commodity," said national team coach Richie Meade, who also leads the lacrosse program at Furman.

Fletcher is well-respected at Loyola, yet there's also an underlying amusement that teammates derive from attempting to describe him. "Goofy" is a common adjective for the wiry senior. Fletcher himself nonchalantly declared "In high school, I was a big nerd. I'm still a big nerd."

Little wonder Frazier couldn't muster a defining Fletcher anecdote recently.

"He's just Fletch," Frazier said. "I don't know how to describe it. He just has mantras, he has his Fletch-isms, whatever you want to call it and he just kind of does it. Everyone kind of sees it and they respect it and go with it."

Loyola's transformation back into a national contender has coincided with the progress of the Greyhounds' current senior class. An NCAA tournament mainstay in the 1990s with a pair of final four appearances to its credit, Loyola had not won a postseason game since 2001 before its title two years ago.

It was an unexpected burst from a stable program that had settled into a spot as a team bound to finish in the second 10 most seasons. Since Fletcher entered the starting lineup, Loyola is 44-7.

"The fact is we're not where we are without Joe Fletcher," coach Charley Toomey said. "We're not here the last couple years. It's not what he's done on the field, it's the culture that he and Justin and Pat (Laconi) have created. We're a different program."

Perfectionist's last run

In Loyola's season opener Feb. 6 at Virginia, Fletcher was whistled for a slash late in the first quarter. It led to a frenzied bit of research: When was the last time Joe Fletcher committed a slash.

The answer was not at any point in his college career, an absurdity for a three-year starter who has now played in 64 career games. He has just five penalties total in his four seasons, and just two this year. Even for a player who limits risks and uses poke checks and sublime positioning as his best weapons, it's hard to fathom.

His most recent flag was a holding penalty April 17 against Bucknell. A week or so later, Craig "Tick Tock" Tillman, a longtime Baltimore institution who runs the box at Loyola home games, shared a story with Toomey.

"Tick Tock came up to me the other day and goes, 'That boy sat down and took a knee in the box and I said, I've been waiting all season to say hello,''" Toomey said.

It was a rare miscue for a player who admittedly savors the mental part of the game as much as anything. Ward believes Fletcher simply has better anticipation of where opponents intend to go, and he gains an even greater advantage by refusing to make a bad play in the hope of turning it into a good one.

"There aren't many perfectionists out there, at least our age," Ward said. "That's just what Fletch is."

His detailed approach led to a dominant senior season. He enters the NCAA tournament with 76 groundballs; his per-game total of 4.75 is the most nationally for players who don't faceoff or log considerable time on faceoff wings.

But the easiest way to measure his effectiveness is how little stars have to show for their encounters with him. Wolf mustered just a goal in Loyola's rout of Duke in March. Stanwick managed only two assists for Hopkins on Saturday in the regular-season finale.

"There's been so much talk about Fletch because of the kind of guy he is, great kid, great student all those things," Dwan said. "He's incredibly humble. Everyone's telling stories like that, but what I think gets lost in it for me is how good he actually is. He won't say that about himself, but his footwork, his stickwork, his covering ability is phenomenal."

It's all led to the more improbable developments in the sport in recent years: A spotlight on a technically sound player who is easy enough to lose track of because of his ability to quietly extinguish potent scorers.

Fletcher admits he could do without the attention, preferring simply to play and win (two things he's done plenty of at Loyola). But there is an upside to even to an increase in media requests, one that might come in handy if he wins the Tewaaraton later this month.

"I can speak in public a little bit better," Fletcher said. "If you had told me when I was a freshman I would speak with a lot more people, I don't think I'd be able to believe that. Not saying I'm comfortable, but I'm able to pretend and get through it."

Fletcher might not enjoy discussing his own on-field exploits, but teammates are more than happy to fill in the blanks. There's also an appreciation in the Greyhounds' locker room that the player with the largest profile is genuinely uninterested in expanding it for any reason other than successfully chasing another national title.

"He doesn't give a crap about it," Ward said. "He's not concerned with being that guy that has 50 (caused turnovers) or all those stats. He doesn't care about being the guy who is always the slider and always trying to put the ball on the ground. He's very unselfish and understands the way the defense works and what makes the defense work. That's what makes us so good, because the best defensive player is the most unselfish on the field."

Thompson is an imposing matchup Saturday. Notre Dame's Matt Kavanagh might be waiting in the quarterfinals. If the seeds held, there's a good chance he would draw Syracuse's Kevin Rice in the semifinals. Not one of them is easy to contain.

Not one of them, though, has encountered a defenseman quite like Fletcher this season, and any of those matchups would make for a riveting game within a game this month. For his part, Toomey is grateful to head into one last postseason with Fletcher in his lineup.

"We think," Toomey said, "he's been saving his best for last."

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