ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — Randy Mearns admits his first recruiting trip on the job as St. Bonaventure’s men’s lacrosse coach didn’t go the way he expected.

Although Bona hired Mearns, the former longtime Canisius coach, in June 2017, more than a year out from the new SBU program’s first school year of 2018-19, he still had to play catch-up in the recruiting cycle. Mearns said when he attended his first national recruiting showcase as Bona coach, last July in Pittsford, he found himself alone among Division I coaches at the Class of 2018 field.

“These are the kids that are going into their senior year,” Mearns said. “There were D-II coaches because all the D-I coaches were at the 2019s and the 2020s because everybody was done (recruiting 2018). I’m watching all these kids play and I knew I could do this, but I’m like, ‘There’s a lot of really good kids still playing,’ and OK, that was good.”

Humorously, Mearns recalls the trip as much for what happened next. Earlier that week he asked athletic director Tim Kenney where to find some Bona gear to represent his new school.

“So I came in, I said to Tim, ‘Hey, I need some St. Bonaventure stuff,’ because I have 19 years of Canisius stuff,” Mearns recalled. “Then he said to me, we’re working on things, with an equipment deal, just go to the bookstore and get what you need … it doesn’t matter, get what you need, represent us well.”

There was one hang-up: Mearns didn’t plan for rain.

“I am in my St. Bonaventure stuff and it starts pouring and I’m like, ‘Damn, I don’t have an umbrella … Oh no, I do have an umbrella,’ guess what school that’s from?” Mearns said “I’ve got a Canisius umbrella. You think I’m allowed to pull out a Canisius umbrella? I can’t do that. Here I am, I’m getting soaked, I didn’t have a baseball hat, just getting trounced, you put the books away and you’re getting soaked. Then when I came back to campus, I said to Tim, ‘You know what? When you told me, ‘Hey, get what you need.’ Guess what? I didn’t get what I needed. I need umbrellas, I need hats …”

The umbrella snafu aside, Mearns got to work finding 2018 high school graduates who had not yet committed to a Division I school. He ended up filling out his first roster with 35 incoming players, two of them transfers and 33 freshmen-to-be.

“When I went to the 2018 field, there wasn’t any D-I coaches because everybody was already done,” Mearns said. “So one, I knew this: there’s players out there. Right now, this year, this is a ballpark figure: In the United States alone, there’s 45,000 seniors graduating that play lacrosse. There’s only 72 D-I teams. If every team gets 10 — some get 15, I’m justing (10) so we can round numbers — that’s only 720 spots. That leaves 44,280. Like wow, I can do this?”

Mearns added that he’s considering tryouts for more 2018 high school grads planning to attend Bona who reached out to him and returning club team members who have expressed interest.

Kenney noted while the athletic department plans to fully fund the lacrosse program, it’s starting with six scholarship players this year and incrementally increasing as future classes arrive. As of last year, NCAA Division I men’s lacrosse teams had a maximum of 12.6 scholarships.

“To throw it all at one year didn’t make sense,” Kenney explained. “We spread it out a little and the success we’ve had recruiting kind of shows that. As we continue to keep going out in the next three years, we’ll keep adding scholarships to get to fully funded.”

Several Bona recruits recently won state or national titles. Max Brie, a native Canadian, won his second straight 3A North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association state championship playing for Christ School (Asheville) as a captain long stick man.

The Bonnies had three recruits on The Hill Academy’s GEICO Lacrosse Nationals-winning squad, including starting goalie Brett Dobson. Future Bonnies Brodie Anderson and Sean Westley also played this year for the Canadian prep power out of Ontario, which beat Salisbury School (Conn.) 15-12 behind 16 Dobson saves on May 29 in the championship game in Washington, D.C.

Another future Bonnie, Niagara-Wheatfield senior defenseman Zach Belter, recently earned All-Western New York recognition.

Mearns compared building a Division I team from scratch to building a national team — something Mearns has experience with, as he’s set to coach his native Canada for a second time this summer at the FIL Men’s Lacrosse World Championship in Israel. Mearns coached Canada to gold in 2014.

“How we approached it is really trying to be more position-specific, making sure you have all the different tools in the toolbox,” he said. “It’s like developing a national team program, and when you do that, you really start to understand like, listen, I don’t need 14 right-handed attack men and I don’t need 14 left-handed attack men, because 11 of them are never going to play. You need the right fit guys and have all the different tools in the toolbox.”

Both Kenney and Mearns, who is on to 2019 recruiting and identifying 2020 grads, said recruitment becomes easier once prospective players arrive on the Bona campus.

“The response has been tremendous from these kids wanting to come here,” Kenney said, “and that’s a testament to the place, to the institution itself. When you get kids down here, I’ve always said once you get kids on this campus, they fall in love with it. And the demographic of a lacrosse player fits what we have as a student body.”

Mearns said he likes coaching as a small campus at a similar-sized school to his alma mater, Canisius, where he coached 19 years. But one benefit he sees coming from the Buffalo school: space for fields.

“Here’s the best part of St. Bonaventure: there’s nine fields out there,” he said, pointing behind the Reilly Center. “There’s nine of them to work on your game. You have to understand, at least where I’m coming from. I’m coming from a city campus, so here’s my entire NCAA experience: when baseball’s practicing, it’s very difficult for you to practice or play or work on your game; when baseball has a doubleheader, it’s very difficult for you to practice or play and work on your game; when softball has a doubleheader, it’s very hard for you to … and so on and so on and soccer and the whole bit. There’s nine fields out there.

“You can go work on your game as a student-athlete at any time you want. That’s a difference. That was attractive to me.”

(Salamanca Press sports editor Sam Wilson may be contacted at swilson@oleantimesherald.com)