Lax Alums Thrilled to Be Back on Grounds

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Near the end of his tenure as an assistant coach at Virginia Military Institute, Mikey Herring was a finalist for a position on Kevin Cassese’s staff at Lehigh University. Herring, not far removed from his playing days at the University of Virginia, didn’t get the job, but Cassese didn’t forget their conversations.

“I was very impressed with Mikey,” Cassese recalled this week. “He was very, very, very young and green, but I could tell just in going through that interview process that he was going to be elite, very special, and he was incredibly organized and very detail-oriented. It was very clear to me that he was very much a protégé of Sean Kirwan.”

Each followed a different path to Charlottesville, but four years after their interaction at Lehigh, Herring and Cassese are finally colleagues.

After three years as Virginia’s associate head coach and offensive coordinator, Cassese took charge of the program in late May. His first hire was former Vermont head coach Chris Feifs, whose titles at UVA is associate head coach.

The next two additions to the staff were Herring, who’ll oversee the Cavaliers’ offense, and Matthew Nunes, who’ll work with the goalkeepers and assist Feifs with the defense.

Nunes and Herring are former UVA standouts, and they’re thrilled to be back at their alma mater.

“It’s a special program that I'm honored and fired up to be a part of,” said Herring, who played for Dom Starsia as a first-year in 2016 and for Lars Tiffany in 2017, '18 and '19.

“When Coach Cassese offered me the opportunity, it was something I couldn't say yes fast enough to,” said Nunes, who played for Tiffany. “Virginia lacrosse is super special to every single person who's been a part of the program.”

Herring spent the past three seasons as offensive coordinator at Dartmouth College, where his boss was Kirwan, a former UVA offensive coordinator. Nunes, whose senior season at Virginia was 2025, coached the goalies at Fairfield University this past season.

Herring wants to be a head coach one day, “but to come back here and coach the offense has kind of been a goal ever since I got into coaching, so it's cool to finally realize that goal and be doing it now.”

Nunes said: “When I got into coaching, it was for always a dream to somehow end up back in Charlottesville, and the dream just came true a lot faster.”

Cassese graduated from Duke and Feifs from Maryland, which was then a member of the ACC. UVA needed representation on the staff, too, Cassese believed.

“I learned that in my time at Lehigh,” he said. “I feel like when you have alums of the program involved in your coaching staff, there's just deeper ties to the program. There's an incredibly deep love that they have for the place, and the sense of gratitude that they have for everything that they learned along the way, everything that helped to shape who they are as people.

“This is a place that has incredibly passionate alumni and a rich history, and so I feel like when we can get a few of those guys who are also, by the way, elite coaches, it's an absolute home run.”

In 2019, Herring’s senior season, the Wahoos won the program’s sixth NCAA title. In the Hoos’ first-round win over Robert Morris that year, he scored six times to tie the program record for most goals in an NCAA tournament game.

The son of a longtime lacrosse and basketball coach, Herring joined VMI’s staff as offensive coordinator soon after graduating from Virginia. Looking back, Herring said, he’s not sure if he was ready for that responsibility, “but those three years, I think, were instrumental for me, just having a lot of ownership and being able to be an offensive coordinator right away. That was kind of like a trial by fire to some degree.”

From VMI, Herring moved to UMBC, where he was offensive coordinator for the 2023 season. He wasn’t in Baltimore long. Kirwan left Tiffany’s staff at UVA in June 2023 to become head coach at Dartmouth, and he hired Herring as his offensive coordinator.

“Coach Kirwan is awesome,” Herring said, “and so I think there is certainly a little piece [about leaving Dartmouth] that's a little bit bittersweet, just because of our relationship, but he's been awesome and incredibly supportive, so I can't be more thankful for him and his mentorship. How he handled this whole process with me has been awesome.”

During his search for an offensive coordinator, Cassese settled on four finalists, and he interviewed them in different locations about their coaching and recruiting philosophies. Then he had each finalist do a Zoom with several of UVA’s returning offensive players, “to have those guys be a part of the process and provide feedback,” Cassese said.

The last candidate standing was Herring, who says he’s grown tremendously as a coach since starting at VMI.

“I think the cool thing about lacrosse, and just coaching in general, is that it's always evolving. If you stay exactly the same from year to year, you're kind of dying a little bit,” said Herring, who grew up in Dedham, Mass. “Obviously you have some base principles or schemes that you believe in, but I’m constantly learning as a coach and constantly changing. How do you teach things better? Is there a better scheme? Is there a better way to communicate with the guys? I love that piece of it, and adapting throughout the years has been awesome.”

Nunes and Cassese overlapped at UVA for two years. If there was one player in the program in 2024 and ’25 whom he saw as a future coach, Cassese said, it “was Matt Nunes. He was just kind of mature beyond his years. He was someone that saw the game differently. He was essentially serving the role as the quarterback of our defense and communicator of our defense and our ride and our clear.

“He knew all that inside and out and would come into the office to talk in detail about the X's and O’s, and it was very clear that he just saw the game differently and thought about it differently. And so it was no shock to any of us when he decided to give the coaching profession a shot, and he got his feet wet last year at Fairfield. Now it’s amazing to be able to have him continue his coaching career back here.”

Coaching has long intrigued Nunes, who grew up in the Houston suburbs. He played for the West Coast Starz as a boy and, after enrolling at UVA, spent his offseasons coaching with the club.

As a Virginia player, Nunes said, he talked regularly with his coaches about their day-to-day responsibilities, knowing he wanted to go into that profession. Not until he started at Fairfield, however, did Nunes fully appreciate everything coaching entailed.

“It taught me that have to be able to explain things at the most basic level to a wide group of people,” Nunes said. “Different players understand concepts in different ways. Some people can understand it like the way Coach Tiffany taught me, or I have to figure out a new way to explain a terminology to a freshman goalie from Atlanta, because they haven't had that experience with lacrosse coaching.”

From a team that won the ACC title and earned the No. 5 seed in the NCAA tournament this past season, the Cavaliers return numerous key players. Among those who must be replaced, though, is Jake Marek, who sparkled in the cage during the Hoos’ late-season surge.

Competing to succeed Marek as the starter in 2027 will be six goalies: returners Kyle Morris, Patrick Biese, Troy Capstraw and Colin Hook; incoming freshman Hunter Mezzatesta; and Michael Ippolito, a transfer from Syracuse.

Morris, Capstraw and Hook were in the program in 2025, so Nunes already knows them, and as an undergraduate he hosted Mezzatesta on his recruiting visits to UVA. He’s spoken to all six of the goalies since joining Cassese’s staff.

“I think it's going to be a really cool group,” said Nunes, who started 57 games for the Cavaliers. “It’s going to be super competitive with all six goalies who are going to want to be the guy. And that's something that's really special. So it will be fun, it will be competitive, and there will, for sure, be days where it's going to be hard. But the hard's good.”

Virginia returns a wealth of talent on offense. Brendan Millon and McCabe Millon, who tied for the team lead with 77 points apiece, are back, as are Ryan Colsey (46 points), Ryan Duenkel (31 points), Joey Terenzi (26 points) and Chase Band (21 points), among others.

The Millon brothers and Colsey were All-ACC selections, and Brendan Millon was ACC Freshman of the Year.

“I think that was one of the enticing things going through this process,” Herring said, “just the accumulation of talent that's in this roster, not only on the offensive side of the ball, but just in general. But specifically with the O guys, there's a lot of talented players. And so I couldn't be more fired up to work with those guys and just getting to have initial phone calls with them. It seems like a group that's working really hard to accomplish the goals and the standards that are set by this program in terms of winning ACC and national championships.”

Since his hiring was announced, Herring said, he’s received congratulations from former Cavaliers spanning several eras.

“I think that's one of the reasons why this place is so special,” Herring said. “It’s just care from the alums and the willingness to give back and support. That's been really, really cool to see, obviously from the guys that I played with, but also just from multiple generations of UVA lacrosse as well.”

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