Longtime Friends Bring Cavalier Spirit to Chicago

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Matt Kelly left Chicago for the University of Virginia in the summer of 2005. Ross LaBauex followed a year later. They attended different high schools and didn’t meet until both were on Grounds, where Kelly and LaBauex played lacrosse and soccer, at UVA, respectively. The members of those teams interacted often, in part because their locker rooms shared a wall at the University Hall.

Their status as student-athletes, however, wasn’t the only thing that drew LaBauex and Kelly together.

“There’s not a lot of us who come from the Midwest,” LaBauex said. “We were like the outsiders. And then soccer and lacrosse, for whatever reason, were just always close. We’d root for each other.”

Growing up in the Midwest, LaBauex said, “I didn’t know anything about lacrosse, because it wasn’t like what it is now. It’s exploded now. You can’t go anywhere without seeing lacrosse, but when I was growing up no one played lacrosse, and so I’m committed to UVA and people are like, ‘Yo, UVA is in the [NCAA tournament’s] final four, they’re about to sell out a football stadium, and I’m like, ‘What is this?’ ”

Once he got to Charlottesville, LaBauex came to appreciate lacrosse, and he and Kelly forged a friendship that continues today. “Hard to believe it’s been 20 years,” Kelly said. “It doesn’t feel like that.”

After graduating from the University, both made their way back to the Midwest, where they again see each other regularly. Kelly and LaBauex are coaching colleagues at Mount Carmel High School on Chicago’s South Side.

“Kind of a unique situation,” said Phil Segroves, Mount Carmel’s athletic director.

LaBauex, a graduate of Mount Carmel, is in his first year as head coach of the school’s varsity soccer team. Kelly, who graduated from New Trier High School on the North Shore of Chicago, is in his second year in charge of Mount Carmel’s varsity lacrosse program.

Mount Carmel tried to hire as LaBauex as head soccer coach after the 2024 season, but he turned down the job. “I called him and he was like, ‘Coach, I’m sorry. I’ve got three boys. My wife travels a lot. I just can’t do it,’ ” Segroves recalled.

In August, however, the job unexpectedly came open again, and Mount Carmel, desperate to find a new coach on the eve of the season, went back to LaBauex. Segroves received a different answer this time.

“He was like, ‘Carmel guys don’t let each other down. If you need me, I’ll figure it out,’ ” Segroves said.

LaBauex “stepped in to be the hero of the day,” Kelly said.

“If I had said no, they probably wouldn’t have a coach right now,” LaBauex said. “I had a good experience at Mount Carmel. They always watched out for me, and it’s a tight-knit community. It’s cool to come back these years to see how much it’s evolved. It’s like a family.”

The school is “very, very diverse,” Kelly said, “and one thing that is a common denominator, which I have noticed, is the kids all work their butts off and listen and respect each other. It’s a special place.”

An all-boys Catholic school, Mount Carmel has a storied history in athletics. Its alumni include Donovan McNabb and Simeon Rice, who starred in the NFL, and Denny McLain, a two-time Cy Young winner in Major League Baseball.

“So to have Ross and Matt here to try to build some greatness in soccer and lacrosse, these are pretty exciting times for us,” Segroves said. “They really are special guys and dads and husbands.”

Each left UVA with an NCAA championship ring. Kelly earned his at the front end of his college career, helping the Wahoos finish 17-0 as a freshman in 2006.  LaBauex’s championship celebration came at the conclusion of his final college game, which secured the College Cup for Virginia in 2009.

Several students at Mount Carmel play both soccer and lacrosse, including a young man with whom LaBauex had a recent conversation that he later shared with Kelly.

“I was like, ‘Jordan, how many kids can say that both of their coaches went to UVA and won national championships?’ ” LaBauex recalled, smiling. “He was like, ‘Yeah, that’s kind of crazy, huh, Coach?’ Hopefully Matt and I can bestow on them a little coaching and some life lessons along the way.”

Growing up, Kelly was perhaps best known athletically for his exploits on the football field. As a tailback at New Trier, he set school records for career rushing yards (4,033) and career touchdowns (47).

“I went out and watched him play football,” recalled Dom Starsia, Kelly’s lacrosse coach at UVA. “It was unbelievable. He was just a brute of a football kid. You knew you were getting a powerful athlete. He was really fun to watch.”

At Virginia, the unexpected loss of All-America candidate Steve Holmes forced Kelly, a close defenseman, into the starting lineup before the first game of the 2006 season.

“He was pretty rough around the edges, but he was so athletic and so strong and had such great instincts,” Starsia said. “He was a tough hombre. He could cover anybody. I don’t remember Matt handling the ball a lot that first year, but you couldn’t beat him, and he had great instincts away from the ball.”

Kelly never relinquished his starting job.

“The whole four years of playing lacrosse in Charlottesville, the whole thing’s a peak,” he said. “We went to three Final Fours. We were always ranked in the top three, for the most part. And, at least in my opinion, we never got complacent. We always pushed each other. It was hard, but we made it fun, too. It’s just something that you can’t replicate, and I think about it every single day of my life in one way or another. When you have a tough day, go back and think about that, and things get a little bit better.”

LaBauex, whom Segroves called the best soccer player in Mount Carmel history, changed his game at UVA.

“He came here as an attacking player, and by the time he finished in 2009 with that national championship team he was a defensive midfielder,” said George Gelnovatch, who’s in his 30^th season as Virginia’s head coach.

“He was a great player and super upbeat all the time, positive, tough as nails, athletic as hell. By the time he was a senior, in that defensive midfield position he would gobble up everything.”

In 2006, the Cavaliers advanced to the College Cup in St. Louis, where they lost to UCLA in the NCAA semifinals.

“Ross didn’t start or anything, but he got some minutes in the game,” Gelnovatch said. “Everybody was dejected afterward, and he’s a young guy, but he comes running up to me and goes, ‘We’ll be back, Coach. Don’t you worry.’ I’ll never forget that. And a couple years later, 2009, his senior year, he was a big part of winning it all.”

LaBauex is the fastest athlete he’s ever been around, Kelly said. “Make sure you write that,” LaBauex said, laughing.

That speed helped LaBauex, who earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at UVA, play two seasons in Major League Soccer. He’s now dean of culture at Rauner College Prep, a charter school in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood.

Kelly, whose degree from UVA is in history, isn’t at Mount Carmel during the school day, either. He’s an wealth advisor with William Blair’s Private Wealth Management group in Chicago.

After exhausting his college lacrosse eligibility, Kelly was eager to play football again, and in the summer 2009 he began training with the team at UVA, whose head coach then was Al Groh. In training camp that August, however, Kelly suffered a serious knee injury, ending his college football career before it even starter.

Once he was healthy again, Kelly played professionally for two years in the National Lacrosse League for the Minnesota Swarm. Kelly also began coaching, working with young players at different levels, and continued until 2016.

“And then I took a little bit of a hiatus, and the reason why I did that is because I had an 8 to 5 [job] and I wasn’t able to coach anymore,” Kelly said. “It was just too hard. And so I stopped, and basically what happened is my hours became much more flexible within the last few years. And the guy that actually hired me within wealth management, it was his idea for me to coach. I don’t know if he was talking about high school varsity, but here I am.”

Kelly talks regularly with his college coach.

“This was his first year as a head coach this past spring, so he had lots of questions about that,” Starsia said. “It’s a treat to have [former UVA players] coaching. I love when they call and they ask me, ‘Coach, why won’t they listen to me? Why don’t they do what I say?” I tell them, ‘Welcome to my world for 42 years.’ ”

Kelly and his wife have a young daughter. Coaching appealed to him in part, Kelly said, because it afforded him an opportunity “to share and teach all the things that I learned from Coach Starsia and his staff on my four years at UVA. Not every moment was perfect, but it was an incredible learning experience that I can proudly say built the foundation for who I am today, and that is what I want to give back to the kids that I am coaching and teaching and mentoring.

“A majority of the lacrosse knowledge I learned [at UVA] went out the window in 2010, but the life lessons on how to deal with adversity and ‘do the right thing’ and be a good teammate, neighbor, friend, colleague are what have stuck with me to this day.”

Kelly said his program at Mount Carmel has two rules: Be a good teammate and Make sure it is cleaner when we leave than it was before we got here. “And I learned those from Dom,” he said.

In Chicago, Kelly and LaBauex are a time zone and more than 700 miles away from Charlottesville. But their encounters at Mount Carmel are welcome reminders of their years together at another place each holds dear.

“We’re in the Midwest, so we’re in Big Ten country,” LaBauex said, laughing. “There’s not many of us here.”

The UVA alums try to get back to Charlottesville whenever possible.

“I miss it so much,” Kelly said.

So does LaBauex. When he’s back on Grounds and sees former teammates and Gelnovatch and associate head coach Matt Chulis, “all the memories start rushing back,” LaBauex said.

“And it’s just something that’s cool to also share with your significant other. Because I didn’t know my wife then, and she’s like, ‘Oh, this is a different life you lived.’ It was. A special one, to say the least.”

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