Hoos Expecting Big Things from Schutz in Final Season

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In December 2021, near the end of his first semester at the University of Virginia, Griffin Schutz made the cover of Inside Lacrosse magazine. A graduate of Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, the 6-foot-3, 225-pound Schutz was big, strong and fast, and Inside Lacrosse ranked him first among the recruits who entered college that fall.

Such accolades don’t mean much to Schutz now, he said, but at the time “I was pretty excited about it. It was pretty awesome to see my hard work kind of get rewarded and see my time at Deerfield get rewarded in a tangible way. I pretty much just used that ranking as a confidence-builder going into [the 2022 season].”

At Virginia, a program that has won seven NCAA titles, it’s not uncommon for a first-year to arrive with such fanfare. Even before Schutz made it to Grounds, Lars Tiffany had coached celebrated recruits Dox Aitken, Matt Moore and Connor Shellenberger. Tiffany said he’s often found that blue-chip recruits struggle at first to live up to outside expectations.

Take Shellenberger, who left UVA last year as a four-time first-team All-American and the program’s all-time leader in career points (323) and career assists (192). As a freshman in 2020, he chose to redshirt.

Shellenberger said he remembers the hype around him as being “a huge burden. I felt this huge pressure that I had to kind of live up to that ranking and I felt like guys on our team were gonna be judging me constantly during practice to see if I lived up to that ranking, if I was truly that No. 1 recruit that everybody thought I was.”

He learned otherwise. “Guys didn’t care about any of that,” Shellenberger said. “They just care about how you are as a teammate and hanging out off the field and doing all those fun things that come with being a part of a team. I definitely handled it the wrong way.”

Shellenberger said he never sensed that Schutz “was feeling that much pressure. I think there were even a couple times where I was just like, ‘How are you doing, do you feel any of it?’ And he never really seemed like he felt it at all. So he handed it really well.”

Schutz started 15 games at midfield in 2022 and totaled 30 points, on 23 goals and seven assists. As a sophomore, he had 24 goals and 16 assists, and he contributed 23 goals and 12 assists in 2024 to help the Wahoos reach the NCAA semifinals for the second straight season.

If the players in Schutz’s recruiting class were re-ranked, Notre Dame’s Chris Kavanagh would probably take the top spot this year. But Schutz was named a third-team All-American last season, as well as All-ACC, and he could finish his college career ranked second all-time among UVA middies in career goals and career points, behind Aitken in both categories.

Tiffany expects No. 26, whom the Cavaliers tried briefly at attack early in his career, to reach new heights as a middie this season.

“What we’re seeing and witnessing from Griffin Schutz is the transformation that many of us Virginia fans were hoping would happen, to the chagrin of our enemies,” Tiffany said.

“I think it’s realistic that he could have a significantly eye-opening season. I think he’s really ready to take ownership and to not wait to see how he fits into the game. He needs to take over the midfield.”

In September, before the Cavaliers started practicing, Tiffany asked each player to send him a personal goal for the fall. What he received from Schutz floored Tiffany.

“He sent me an emotionally deep goal that that’s connected to the roots of the game, the spirit of the game, the medicine of lacrosse,” Tiffany said. “It was really, for me, a revelation that this is someone who’s at a point in his career ready to take on the onus and responsibility of being an elite midfielder and putting a team on his shoulders. And we’re seeing it in practice.”

Schutz, who’s trimmed down to about 215 pounds, set two goals for the fall. On the field, Schutz wrote to Tiffany, he wanted “to attack each day and each rep with a fierce competitive egoless tenacity that is rooted in my love for the game. I want to bring back the roots of the game and play the way the game was meant to be played, as a competitive warrior who plays for the spirit of the game and its medicine, and I think everything else schematic-wise will follow.”

Off the field, Schutz told Tiffany, he wanted “to keep living life in the healthy and happy manner I have enjoyed these past couple of months. I want to be a great teammate, student, and person and an active member of the community. I want to embrace life and take every opportunity that is thrown my way.”

If he hasn’t been the dominant force many expected when Schutz enrolled at UVA, Schutz has never let outside expectations bother him.

“I was always just concerned about playing,” he said. “I’m not worried about the scrutiny or what the public was saying about me personally. I was just kind of hoping that I could help the team as much as I could and win games. And that’s kind of how I’ve always thought and played. So I think that was a good coping mechanism, you could call it.”

Schutz, 23, grew up in Trumbull, Conn., about 20 miles from New Haven. As a freshman he starred on the varsity team at Trumbull High School, totaling 73 goals and 43 assists as an attackman. He transferred after his ninth-grade year to Deerfield Academy. Schutz thrived at the prestigious New England boarding school.

“It was a pretty transformative experience,” he said, and he hopes to teach and coach in a similar environment after graduating from the University.

“In a perfect world I want to end up back in a boarding school situation,” Schutz said, “just because I feel like I know the experiences, I know what the kids are going through, and I’m interested in helping them out. I’ve been coaching [lacrosse] pretty much every summer now since high school, and I’m real passionate about it.”

When he arrived at UVA, Schutz thought he might apply for admission to the McIntire School of Commerce, but “I quickly decided it wasn’t for me,” he said. He’s majoring in environmental sciences, as his brother, Tom, did at Southern New Hampshire University.

“We grew up on a lake,” Schutz said, “and so a lot of our summers were playing around in there, playing outside. We were never too big into video games or anything like that. So it was always kind of in our DNA almost, and once Tom took [environmental sciences] in his college experience and he loved it, he passed that along to me.”

Tom Schutz, who also played lacrosse in college, is now a wetland scientist with Goddard Consulting in Massachusetts. The younger Schutz interned with Goddard last summer, and that limited the time he could spend with Team IMPACT. But he remains committed to that non-profit organization, which pairs children facing serious illnesses and disabilities with college athletic teams across the country.

Schutz and teammate Noah Chizmar, among others with UVA athletics, act as campus liasions for Team IMPACT.

“We pretty much just try to raise awareness for Team IMPACT and get the cause out there to the greater public and to our team,” Schutz said. “It’s a cool cause that me and Noah, who’s my roommate, thought was a good thing to get involved with.”

His involvement with Team IMPACT gives him something “like the feeling I get when I coach,” Schutz said. “It’s kind of just this idea of giving back and being part of something that’s bigger than yourself. Selfishly, you do feel good inside when you help others, and it’s kind of like a win-win. So helping out the way Chiz and I have, it makes us kind of reflect on our privilege and what we’ve gone through, and it’s not nearly as bad as what some of these Team IMPACT kids have. It makes us feel good inside to give back, and it makes us feel super grateful for what we have. It’s awesome that we’re in a position to help people, and that’s kind of how I hope to live my life whether it’s through Team IMPACT or in the future.”

Schutz played running back on the football team at Deerfield Academy and attracted some interest from college programs for that sport. Early in his high school years, however, he had committed to play lax at Boston University, “and I was pretty set on lacrosse,” Schutz recalled.

In October 2019, he switched his commitment to UVA. “I really liked, and I still really like, the [BU] coaching staff and what they have to offer,” Schutz said. “But Virginia just felt like a better fit to me and my family.”

Five-plus years later, he’s pumped for his final season as a Cavalier. Fourth-ranked UVA opens the season Saturday at noon against Colgate at Klöckner Stadium.

Three of the players who produced the most points for Virginia last season are gone, including Shellenberger (84) and Payton Cormier (78), an attackman who left with an NCAA-record 224 career goals. Moreover, three highly regarded freshmen—Kyle Colsey, Ryan Duenkel and Sean Browne—will miss the season.

In Schutz’s first three seasons at UVA, the team excelled with him in more of a supporting role on offense. That won’t be enough, Tiffany said, if the Hoos are to reach their goals this spring.

“There’s no want you to be good,” Tiffany said. “We need you to be good. We need you to be the impact guy, because we did graduate those two rock stars that will go down in the lore of Virginia lacrosse, and the three hot-shot freshmen are out for the season.”

Schutz knows well how much firepower UVA lost from last season, and “it would be nice to take it up a notch,” he said. “With that being said, I think a big key for this year is just for everyone to play within themselves. But I think we have the starpower and the personnel that if we all just play our roles and play them to the best of our abilities, I think we are going to be a very good team.”

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