Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox. Subscribe to our sports newsletter here.

There are a couple of golf courses near the affluent suburb of Potomac, Maryland. With its perpetually fresh-cut grass and opulent fairways, the Congressional Country Club might just be the finest of them all, and that’s where Joe Rhoa is shooting the breeze with Paul Rabil. It’s no big deal, though. He just happens to be golfing buddies with one of the greatest lacrosse midfielders ever.

His oldest son, Luke Rhoa, is in eighth grade at this point. Luke’s a pretty decent midfielder himself. He’s fallen in love with lacrosse over the past few years, but the sport hasn’t loved him back. The neighboring club teams in Washington, D.C., keep cutting him.

Joe’s got Rabil’s uninterrupted attention for 18 holes, so he figures it wouldn’t hurt to ask a quick question. Who knows? It might even help Luke down the line.

“I know you get this a lot,” Joe began, “but what’s your training routine?”

Rabil told him he split his shots up equally between his right and left hands. He played wall ball and tried shots from each arm angle, dividing them up around the clock. Start at 12 o’clock, then move to 1, then 2 and so on.

This became Luke’s gospel. He began procrastinating assignments for those backyard drills, and the results are for all to bear witness. Princeton attack Colin Burns — Luke’s neighbor — says that, excluding his teammates, Luke’s the best shooter in the country. Syracuse defender Riley Figueiras — who’s played with Luke at SU and St. John’s College High School (D.C.) — says he’s the nation’s best shooter, period. Syracuse attack Finn Thomson won’t boost his teammate’s ego, but even he can’t deny Luke’s a top-three shooter on the team.

“It’s good,” Luke says, a grin spreading across his face as he talks about his shot. “It’s good.”

If you were to watch SU’s midfield for a while, seeing how easily the ball leaves Luke’s stick and hits the net from 15 yards out, no one would blame you if you chalked it up to luck. Vinnie Trujillo, a former Syracuse and St. John’s midfielder, remembers the preternatural ease with which their shooting drills came to Luke. “This kid is just unreal,” he’d often think to himself.

But you don’t get that reputation by accident. The distinction Luke’s earned — the best shooter in the country — is one that’s been chiseled through years of work and gets renewed each time he scores one of the 76 goals he’s tallied across four years at Syracuse.

Ilyan Sarech | Design Editor

“Knock on wood, I’m surprised he honestly didn’t get more injuries from overuse,” Burns said. “It’s actually insane how many shots that kid gets.”

If anyone, Burns would know. He saw Luke’s maturation firsthand. The Tiger attack first met Luke when they were on the Rockville Football League’s Steelers in second grade. They weren’t nearly as good as their NFL namesake, but Luke might not have been that far off.

Burns remembers Luke being the team’s best player. Before Luke’s shot became his premiere athletic trait, it was his speed. Luke doesn’t know where it came from. His best guess? It’s from running around his dining room, evading his parents after ruining birthday parties by taking premature bites from his cakes.

Back in those days, Luke played with the son of Alonzo Babers, a former Olympian sprinter. After practices, Luke and Babers’ son — who was also “extremely fast,” Joe recalls — would race with the rest of the Steelers.

“He was lightning, a super good athlete,” Joe said, referring to Babers’ son. “But it was always Luke No. 1, and he was No. 2.”

Cliff Gross was the head coach of that Steelers team, but what really got him going was lacrosse. Gross was an All-American defender at Yale in the 1980s, and as he got older, he began coaching at Bethesda Youth Lacrosse.

When Gross saw Luke, the lightning-quick 9-year-old, he knew he had to get him on his Bethesda teams. But unlike some of Luke’s other coaches, Gross doesn’t remember him ripping his trademark outrageous stepdowns, shots most other players would get benched for even trying.

“Now, he’s got the three-quarter (angle shots), different shots, lefty,” Gross said. “That’s all probably more high school and later.”

But being a speedster is one thing. If you can also put the ball anywhere you want from any spot on the field, opposing defenses can’t do anything about you.

That evolution began in his Potomac backyard, a flat, decently-sized grassy area. It was just a goal and a backstop at first, but Luke has since added a few rebounding nets, courtesy of his neighbors. They catch any balls he misfires so he can shoot endlessly.

Joe never had to tell Luke to practice his shot. After receiving Rabil’s advice, he was in that yard every chance he got from eighth grade onward, often with Burns. They’d throw the indie band Dispatch on a speaker, listening to the album “America, Location 12.” They’d do crossbar challenges, or pick a spot and see how many times in a row they could hit it. Even when Burns was done, Luke would stay out there, shooting the daylight out of the ball.

Luke Rhoa runs across the JMA Wireless Dome turf, evading Duke’s midfielders. Rhoa has scored eight man-up goals in 2026, a mark that leads the nation. Eli Schwartz | Asst. Photo Editor

Quite literally. When Luke began driving, Burns recalls, he would pull his Jeep around, park it in front of the backyard and flick on the headlights so they could shoot deep into the night.

“There were definitely some times where I’d be out there until 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock in the morning with the light on,” Luke said. “My neighbors are like, ‘Turn your music off.’”

He followed Rabil’s routine obsessively. He can’t tell you how many shots he gave each angle of the clock. He says he simply “lived on the wall,” firing balls in his basement when he headed indoors. He was building the skillset that allowed him to do “Luke Rhoa things,” as St. John’s head coach Wesley Speaks put it.

Years ago, some of Luke’s St. John’s teammates — Figueiras, Trujillo and current Navy attack Mac Haley — often slept at his house during weeknights, since he lived closer to the school. They played “goalie wars” in that basement for hours, and Luke would embarrass them by pulling out behind-the-back, between-the-legs tricks. Some days, Figueiras recalls, they’d leave practice just for Luke to shoot alone for another four to five hours.

“You don’t become the best shooter in the country by not working that hard,” Figueiras said.

Luke started as a freshman on a St. John’s squad that, by his senior year, was widely hailed as one of the greatest high school lacrosse teams ever. Burns played on Georgetown Prep (D.C.) during those years, and he doesn’t recall beating Luke once. Luke was the Cadets’ best midfielder in 2022, when they went 19-0 and walked away with the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference Championship.

If Luke wanted to rack up stats, Haley said, he certainly could’ve had more goals. Opposing teams knew it, too. He’d dish a pass, and long poles would linger near him instead of sliding off, opening up players like Haley to cut in on the backside.

And when Luke managed to get free? Forget it. His shots became automatic, to the point where Speaks would think, “Rhoa’s got his hands free? It’s going in.” Speaks still remembers how it sounded when he “labeled” his shots, the visceral snap the ball would make as it hit the ticket on the net’s upper corner.

“Unfortunately, you come to take it for granted,” Speaks said. “That’s just what you come to expect, because he’s such a high level player.”

That blazing speed, Luke’s first standout trait? It’s a bonus now. The shot’s the main event, his agility just a preliminary bout. That incredible gravity, Luke’s knack for attracting defensive attention by just existing? It’s still there, probably the co-main event, if anything.

Harvard goalie Graham Stevens has faced Luke twice — this February and in last year’s NCAA Tournament — and both times, he’s given up at least three goals to him. He compares Luke to Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry. Defenders naturally overcommit to him, so his shot fakes create more space than most. And the one thing Luke cannot be given is space.

Because when he has it, he’ll make you pay. Every. Single. Time.

“He’s always gonna be a threat,” Stevens said. “No matter what.”

Stevens has never seen a shooter like Luke. He’s told him that to his face. His shot’s too unorthodox, with tons of arm and shoulder movement. His stick is too, strung so tightly it’d cause problems for almost anyone else. Dan Arestia, a USA Lacrosse writer, recently wrote on X that he doubts he could shoot a ball eight yards with it. Haley’s the one who strings it, and even he can’t fathom how Luke plays lacrosse with it.

It makes perfect sense. If you shoot more than anyone, why would your game be comparable to anyone else’s?

“I don’t think there’s anybody like him in the country that is as deceptive as he is when he shoots,” Syracuse head coach Gary Gait said. “I think you could ask Denver goalie (Grayson Manning), because he’s the best goalie in the country, and he had a tough time stopping him.”

Luke’s the kind of guy, Trujillo says, who’d wake up at 5:30 a.m., ever the early bird, and go shoot; who’d struggle to sleep at midnight, ever the insomniac, and go shoot. The tortured artist, burdened by the price of perfection. God knows if he’ll ever get there.

When Luke goes to a field, either at the crack of dawn or deep into a restless night, he only ever brings a single lacrosse ball. He’ll wind his stick back, shoot it, methodically walk to the net and pick up the ball he just released. It seems redundant, but the walk forces him to think. His brain’s the tape recorder. All he does is rewind it.

He controls his actions, and in these moments, he controls the ball as well. He decides where it goes and how fast it gets there. Lacrosse is the medicine game. There’s surely something sacred about this scene. It’s just Luke and the net, the only words spoken from the latter via an unmistakable snap. The sound’s indecipherable to most, but it’s all Luke needs to hear. He returns to his spot. The ball’s in his stick, and the two become one. They’ll say their goodbyes soon enough.

The ritual begins again.

Published on April 8, 2026 at 11:25 pm
Contact Mauricio: mjpalmar@syr.edu | @mpalmarDO