Towson men’s lacrosse graduate student Garrett Zungailia recently chatted with PressBox about the influence that Seth Tierney had on his game, his favorite memories at Calvert Hall and more. The 6-foot-7, 235-pound defenseman picked up 40 ground balls and caused 17 turnovers for the Tigers in 2022 (121 and 47 throughout his career). The Timonium, Md., native was part of MIAA A Conference championship teams at Calvert Hall in 2017 and 2018.
PressBox: How did you become interested in lacrosse?
Garrett Zungailia: I would say for as long as I can remember, I’ve played lacrosse. My parents started me when I was 4 years old playing soft sticks, which are just those plastic sticks that I’m sure some people are familiar with in gym class. It was co-ed. Growing up in the Cockeysville area, one of our really good family friends was actually Seth Tierney, the head coach at Hofstra right now. He was the assistant at Johns Hopkins then. Our families and a few other families would go on vacations every year and hang out a few times each month. …When they moved to Long Island for the Hofstra job, we always would stay in touch with them and try to make it out to at least a Hofstra game a year. At Hopkins, we would go to a ton of those games, go to the lacrosse camps. I would say when my parents put the stick in my hands when I was younger started that, but then what really grew my interest and my love for the sport is being able to have such an exposure to college lacrosse through Coach Tierney. I definitely owe a lot of that to him as well.
PB: How did Tierney influence your game?
GZ: He’s always kind of been there, really encouraging me. Obviously a great lacrosse mind and was a great player himself, just kind of letting me know what I needed to work on, especially coming up through recruiting, that whole process. I was kind of a late bloomer, per se. I didn’t really get a whole lot of looks my freshman and sophomore year of high school before these recruiting rules. You [now can’t] commit before your junior year. All my friends had committed to Division I schools and all that stuff. He was always just there to let me know what he thought I needed to work on, kind of helped me through the recruiting process once it started to pick up and things like that. Being a defenseman now, I got my first long pole from him [at 9 or 10 years old]. I kind of figured out that I was going to play defense. … He kind of set the groundwork, per se, of me playing defense from then on.
PB: What are your favorite memories at Calvert Hall?
GZ: It would have to be my senior year, being able to win the MIAA championship. It was our second year in a row. It was even more important because earlier in the winter we had lost [Dave] Huntley. He was the longtime assistant coach at Calvert Hall. And then the day before our semifinal game, one of my best friends and senior captain Peter Ilardo’s father passed away. It had been a few months after having heart complications, so that was obviously a huge hit to us then after we had already lost our assistant coach. Being able to go out on top and kind of give Peter and his family that great memory and uplift their spirits had to be the most memorable experience I had while there.
PB: Why did you choose to go to Towson?
GZ: What guided me to Towson beforehand was just the respect that he commands from people and just how great of a person and a coach that he’s known as. Visiting the school, I guess it kind of just check off all the boxes — had a great business school, great coaching staff, I knew some guys who I had played with in high school who were there already and had great things to say. They were loving their time there. The guys on the team there also just had nothing but great things to say about this school. One thing that has been a big positive about going Towson — which, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel — is I probably live 15 to 20 minutes away from campus in my parents’ house. So my parents are able to go to every single game, even when we have to travel a little bit. My aunts and uncles are able to come to the game, and cousins and everything, so it’s been really, really cool to have all my family around [to] support me being that I’m kind of close by.
PB: What’s your favorite memory at Towson so far?
GZ: So far, I think it would just have to be freshman year [in 2019], winning the CAA championship. That’s always, always been our goal every single year at the beginning of the year is to win the CAA championship. I guess now looking back on it — as a graduate student, this will be my fifth year there — I think I kind of took it for granted, how hard it really is to win a CAA championship. It’s one of the most competitive conferences, if not the most competitive conference in lacrosse. That freshman year we went from being unranked to No. 1 in the country at one point and then winning the CAA championship. That whole season was awesome with the success that we had and all the lessons I feel like that I’ve learned from that year that we’ve been able to kind of grow and build off of in these later years when we haven’t really had as much success as we had then.
PB: You’ve racked up a lot of caused turnovers and ground balls during your career. Is there an art to playing defense? Have you picked that up from anybody with Towson?
GZ: I think there definitely is. When it kind of comes to mind, guys before me who were great, especially on ball, were Zach Goodrich and Koby Smith. Zach Goodrich was the senior captain my freshman year. All-American, he’s an All-Star in the PLL now. Obviously a tremendous player, and same with Koby. Koby I’ve actually known for I’d have to say 15 or so years. We grew up in the same neighborhood and played lacrosse against each other for a while. I’d have to say probably just kind of learning from them and looking up to those guys definitely helped a lot, for sure.
PB: What’s your favorite thing about Towson the town?
GZ: There’s just a lot to do around town. New places every few months seem to be popping up. The town has really changed for the better since my freshman year. The big apartment buildings are getting brought up. There are new shopping centers … the Whole Foods and Raising Cane’s and all that stuff. There are new restaurants popping up all over. It’s kind of just an exciting place to be with all the development that’s going on right now.
PB: What’s your favorite thing about Towson University?
GZ: My favorite thing from undergrad I would say is the business school. They expose you to a lot. I guess it’s just a very well-rounded curriculum. It just covers all aspects of business, from accounting to finance to marketing to business statistics and legal business, stuff like that — taking classes in all those things. Before you start taking the concentration of your business degree, you take all those courses that are listed. You just get a really well-rounded knowledge for all these kinds of main concepts in business.
PB: What advice do you have for younger players who are in the recruiting process?
GZ: I’d say if at first you’re not really getting attention from colleges, or say you want to go Division I but it’s only Division III schools — that kind of a thing — I would just say keep at it. Don’t get discouraged. Just because you see all these guys are committing to all these places and you think that should be you or you should be kind of getting that attention or you’re better than this player or that, I would just say keep working. Just keep working every single day to become the best player that you can be and you’ll end up where you belong.
PB: What are your goals for after lacrosse?
GZ: After this year, once I get my master’s, I’d like to go into the commercial real estate business. Just want to find a good job with a great company there and kind of see where that takes me. I just had an internship with Greenberg Gibbons this past summer. They’re a local commercial real estate company and I really enjoyed my time there, so just want to stay in that industry.
Photo Credit: Pat Stewart Photography
Issue 279: February/March 2023
Originally published Feb. 15, 2023