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John Haus Comes Home To Revive a Lacrosse Legacy
Since 1981, Carolina athletics teams have won 27 NCAA titles. By 1994, the Tar Heels had won the first Sears Cup for overall Division I sports excellence, and only once since then has UNC finished outside the top six for the cup. But before 1981, UNC was barely on the NCAA championship map, with the lone 1957 basketball title. Then the men's lacrosse team broke out, winning the 1981 national championship. Soon afterward, the floodgates opened for women's soccer, field hockey, women's basketball, and the two familiar men's basketball championships. While many people don't realize it, the lacrosse team, usually overshadowed by hoops and soccer, brought home four trophies in a decade. John Haus '83, a standout defenseman on that 1981 men's lacrosse team, helped the Heels to the first title in a 14-13 victory over the Blue Jays of Johns Hopkins University. Ironically, 17 years later, Haus became the head coach of the Blue Jays, widely considered the nation's most tradition-laden men's lacrosse team, having won seven NCAA titles and made a record 29 straight tournament appearances—the most for any sport at any college. But if you were to walk through the halls of Carmichael Auditorium, where a sketch of Haus as a 1982 First Team All-American hangs, you would discover that he now keeps an office there, as the new head coach of the same team for which he once played. He left Hopkins, where he had taken the Blue Jays to the Final Four the past two years, last year to return to his alma mater, replacing 10-year Head Coach Dave Klarmann '77. The decision was not easy
for Haus, the second of seven children who grew up in Ruxton, Md. The
Blue Jays were among the top teams in the nation, whereas the Tar Heels
had been struggling, not having won an ACC championship since 1996. Their
most recent Following championships in 1982 and 1986 under Coach Willie Scroggs and in 1991 under Klarmann, Carolina lost some of its luster during the rest of the 1990s. Tragedy struck the team in 1995, when sophomore Kevin Reichardt '97 was killed in an infamous Franklin Street shooting. Untimely death struck two other team members—sophomores Kevin Lawn '01 in 1999 and Matt Kull '01 in January 2000. The team suffered. Morale was low, recruiting tailed off and men's lacrosse in Chapel Hill was in the doldrums. Klarmann resigned in June 2000, and now Haus is back in a place where both he and his family have strong ties. "First and foremost, my wife and children felt it was the best spot for us," said Haus, who also has a brother in Winston-Salem. "I did leave a very good school and team, but the UNC program is one of the premier [teams] in the country, and we should be that way year in and year out." Haus began his college coaching career in 1988 as Hopkins' defensive coordinator for Head Coach Don Zimmerman, a former UNC assistant under Scroggs. In 1994, he left for Washington College on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where he led the Shoremen to the Division III title in 1998. Haus then became the 21st coach at Hopkins. "The [UNC] team is obviously not where it needs to be, and they haven't been competitive," Haus said. "I know it's a problem, but they've had great coaches, including Klarmann, who won a national championship."
Scroggs, himself a Hopkins alumnus, is still in Chapel Hill as senior associate athletics director for operations and remembers recruiting Haus from Baltimore's Loyola High School. "There were great offensive players, so then we knew we had to get a defender," Scroggs said. "The talk in Baltimore was that a kid at Loyola was the best defender there was, so we set our sights on him." Haus earned the Jay Gallagher Award as Carolina's top newcomer in 1980. "One of the goals of our program was to be the best team at Carolina," Scroggs said. Shortly after the basketball team lost to Indiana in the 1981 NCAA finals, Scroggs had a message for his team. "Right after that game they lost, I told my team, they had their chance, now let's see if we can win one," he said. "North Carolina had not won a [NCAA] championship in any sport since 1957, so we were the first team. I can remember being on the phone with the chancellor." Scroggs went on to coach for nine more years, leading the Tar Heels to another national title in 1982, when Haus earned first team All-America honors and received the Turnbull Trophy as the UNC team MVP. His senior year, the two-time All-ACC player was named a second team All-American. Scroggs won another national title in 1986, when two of Haus' younger brothers played on the team. "Coach Scroggs taught me preparation, hard work, competitiveness and wanting to be good," Haus said. "All those ingredients he instilled in his players. I realize if we work hard and concentrate on what we're doing, good things will happen. I have a [championship] ring and watch, and they sit on my bureau in my bedroom. When I get up every morning and come to work, those are the goals I have in mind." And just as he did in his days as a player, Haus brings an intensity to the job of coaching that sets him apart from the others. "He was as good a defensive player as we've had," Scroggs said of Haus. "He was not the most gifted athlete, but no one had [more] intensity, desire and ability to work hard every moment in the game. I never had a kid that worked as hard as John Haus." "Sometimes great players don't make great coaches, but John has become a good coach because he is single-minded, has great intensity, a feel for the game and understands it," Scroggs said. "Given time, he'll take our program, which is in a spiral, and right the ship. He'll get us back to playing for championships and being competitive. I'm proud of him because he's earned it and worked hard, and he always gives a great effort." — Worth Civils
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