Harford Community College men’s lacrosse was close. But it couldn’t find a way to the top.
The Fighting Owls reached the Final Four three times over a four-year span, but a championship proved elusive. Heartbreaking late-season losses became commonplace. An adjustment was needed.
“We tightened up a little too much in the years prior,” HCC coach Aaron Verardi said Thursday at the school’s spring sports media day. “Focusing less on winning the championship, that’s kind of our mentality.”
After breaking through in an undefeated 2023 championship season then defending its title last year, HCC is chasing its third consecutive NJCAA crown in 2025. But if it happens, it’ll only be the byproduct of a process-oriented mindset Verardi has learned to cultivate and instill in his players. Now, a perhaps even greater challenge looms to avoid tripping up.
“We know everybody’s coming. We’re marked on everybody’s schedules,” Verardi said. “It’s looking at every game like it’s a championship game, because for that team, it probably is.”
Verardi, entering his 11th season leading HCC and 13th with the program overall, took over as interim coach for a program that needed a reset in 2015. His first roster consisted of 16 players, wasn’t close to championship level and had a “totally different culture.”
“The first few years, it was really important for us to just gain momentum,” Verardi said. “Just get a little bit better. Then I got really lucky.”
Verardi’s staff grew to seven coaches, up from two when he took the job, which helped HCC make its first Final Four in 2019. The Fighting Owls reached their first national final under Verardi two years later but fell to Nassau (New York), then returned to the semifinal in 2022. Few opponents have slowed them down since.
HCC has lost just once over the last two seasons, falling to CCBC Essex in the 2024 region tournament before avenging the defeat in the national championship game weeks later. HCC went a perfect 12-0 in 2023, capped with a 13-8 defeat over Nassau for its first of two consecutive NJCAA titles.
Another national championship win this season would be HCC’s third straight, which hasn’t been done at the NJCAA level since Onondaga (New York) did it from 2017 to 2019. The Fighting Owls, already the first Maryland junior college team to win two straight championships, appear capable — they return 14 players from last year’s team, including three All-Americans, and brought in five Division I transfers.
“The pressure is definitely huge,” sophomore Liam Forsyth said. “It’s something we want to earn and something we take pride in having.”
The Fighting Owls’ roster touts five players from Harford County high schools, a recruiting approach that’s become intentional for Verardi. Jackson Marindin (John Carroll), Peter Buckler (Fallston), Connor Mace (Bel Air) and Johnnie Garst and Blane Dail (C. Milton Wright) all played high school lacrosse just minutes from the Bel Air campus, which reached a deal with the NJCAA in March to host the next four men’s lacrosse championships.
Verardi leans on his local players for help acclimating out-of-state recruits to the area. HCC even boasts four players from England, a first-of-its-kind endeavor for Verardi. The local teammates are valuable in helping them adjust to their new way of life.
“There’s a lot of talent here,” Verardi said. “Those guys that are from Harford County are really invested in this. They’re great players, tough, and some of my hardest workers.”
Constant movement of players is new to the NCAA, but for Verardi, he’s always had to replace nearly his entire roster annually. Such is life at the junior college level, where players have just two seasons of eligibility and aspirations of playing elsewhere eventually.
But that goes both ways. Like HCC has received players dropping down from Division I, it routinely sends graduates to the area’s top programs like Maryland, Towson, UMBC and Rutgers. Verardi estimates 90% of his sophomores find a home at a Division I school the following year, a figure he surely includes in his pitch to high schoolers who are frustrated they never obtained that coveted Division I offer.
“It’s a unique thing that I thoroughly enjoy,” Verardi said. “Something that we’ve been able to do is tell guys, ‘Hey, you can come here, be successful, then move on to varying levels. At the start, we weren’t sending a ton of guys off. I felt like that was a key thing, to be able to show that you can come here and then you can move on from here.”
Before they leave, though, they win at HCC. Every class that’s come through Bel Air in recent years has at least played in a game with a trip to the national championship on the line. Players can push away thoughts of winning a third straight title as best they can, but they’re still eager to make history later this spring.
The date is seared in their minds. After all, they’ve been forced to block it off on their calendars for years.
“Don’t think about the end process,” Forsyth said. “May 10th and 11th is gonna be here when it’s here.”
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