Cavs’ Grayson Sallade looks to end ‘superhero story’ with lacrosse title
Grayson #Grayson
Virginia enters the NCAA tournament semifinals with 13 victories this season. A triumph that won’t show up in the win column might be the most impressive thing anyone tied to the Cavaliers has done in the past year.
Grayson Sallade was barely eight months removed from ACL surgery when Virginia opened its season Feb. 11. Yet there was Sallade, taking his usual spot in the Cavaliers’ short-stick rotation and on faceoff wings.
“When we were younger, I remember hearing stories about how fast Ryan Conrad was able to return from injury [in 2019] and it was sort of like a superhero story,” attackman Xander Dickson said. “Then here comes Grayson and he did it faster than Conrad did it and kind of under-the-radar because that’s who Grayson is.”
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Sallade has played in all 16 games, scoring twice and adding six assists while earning an honorable mention all-American nod for his work as a short-stick defensive midfielder. Already part of two national title teams, he’ll attempt to help the second-seeded Cavaliers (13-3) take a step toward another Saturday when they face third-seeded Notre Dame (12-2) at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field.
Dickson had a clear view of Sallade’s rehab as the two were roommates while interning in Washington. Sallade suffered his injury last May 22 in an NCAA quarterfinal loss to Maryland, underwent surgery in Charlottesville about two weeks later and went to D.C. about 10 days after the procedure.
Whenever he wasn’t working, it was a safe bet he was attending to his physical therapy. He sat out Virginia’s fall ball before getting cleared in early December and spent the next month and a half doing his own training to ensure he was ready for the preseason.
By Jan. 15, he was ready to go.
“When I started to realize that I was going to get cleared a little earlier than I thought, I think that was my moral victory,” Sallade said. “From there, I was just trying to get back to normal as much as possible so I could go out there and perform the way I thought I could. Not just to get back out there but to do it effectively.”
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Teammates were among the first to discover just how rapidly Sallade was back to his usual self. In the weeks leading into the season opener, he was going all-out in six-on-six drills.
Anyone trying to be cautious around the graduate student quickly learned it was not a successful strategy.
“Everyone’s going: ‘Okay, Grayson’s on the field, be careful — no, Grayson’s hitting you, Grayson’s covering you, taking the ball and running the other way. What the heck, I thought he was hurt right now?’ ” Dickson said. “Everyone was in shock and everyone was super-excited because we knew that was a huge piece of our team we needed back.”
The injury also provided an opportunity for another kind of development. Sallade always viewed himself as a lead-by-example type, and his work with the Cavaliers in the fall required him to lead more from the side because he couldn’t participate in practice.
Now back in his more accustomed on-field role, Sallade is a driving force in the Cavaliers’ locker room.
“He is the captain,” Coach Lars Tiffany said. “We have four … No matter whether you have two, three or four captains, you always have one man you really lean on, one man who has the pulse of the team, one man who speaks truth to power, the backbone to make the tough conversations happen with me, and that’s Grayson. And he’s done that for two years now.”
Tiffany likens Sallade’s influence to the impact Dave Smith had during Virginia’s 2019 championship run and the influence John Fox wielded during the Cavaliers’ 2021 charge to a pandemic-interrupted repeat.
Both Smith and Fox were also short-stick defensive midfielders, one of the more anonymous positions in the sport but also massively important to thwarting opposing offenses.
It’s not a position where Sallade, who first committed to Virginia in 2014 before Tiffany took over for Dom Starsia, had plans to craft a legacy when he arrived in Charlottesville.
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“I had hopes as a young first-year coming in, but I think the coaches had other thoughts probably before then that they didn’t tell me,” Sallade said. “Within the first month or so I was fully D-mid.”
Sallade has made a habit of drawing attention with his work on the final weekend of the season. As a freshman in 2019, he missed more than two months before returning to play in the semifinals and title game as Virginia broke an eight-year title drought. Two years later, he collected a career-high eight groundballs in a semifinal defeat of North Carolina.
Those title runs have earned Sallade an appreciation of how a championship team is supposed to evolve as it delves deep into May. And he likes what he sees with the Cavaliers as he enters the final weekend of his college career.
“Coach Tiffany has talked about how we’re loose because we’ve prepared so much and we know how it’s supposed to look because of the experience on this team,” Sallade said. “Other teams might be a little tight and grip their stick a little harder. We’re a little more loose and have a little more fun. Our preparation and experience has allowed us to really enjoy making the Final Four.”