Elijah Myers | Former College Recruit, Youth Lacrosse Coach
Elijah Myers had it all figured out by eighth grade.
Multiple Division I offers. A full-ride opportunity from Ohio State for both football and lacrosse. A commitment to North Carolina before he'd even played a high school game. At 14 years old, he was 6 feet tall, 180 pounds, with varsity-level speed—a physical specimen that coaches drooled over.
"I was incredibly athletically gifted," Elijah says plainly. "I had been playing contact sports 10 months out of the year since fourth grade. All the adults in my life, my teammates, my friends—everyone was like, 'You're going to play at this level. You get to do this.'"
His identity wasn't just wrapped up in being an athlete. It was his entire identity.
Then, going into his junior year of high school, everything collapsed.
When Your Future Disappears Overnight
A bad concussion—one too many after years of playing hard and physical—ended it all. Elijah had to decommit from North Carolina. The Ohio State opportunity vanished. The future he'd been building since he was 11 years old was gone.
"That was pretty tough," he says, his voice still carrying the weight of it. "A lot of my identity was wrapped up in playing, going to practice, working out, going to games, traveling. When I lost that, it led me down some pretty dark roads. That's just part of it—the resilience piece."
For a kid who'd spent his entire childhood being told he was special, being told he'd made it, suddenly having nothing was devastating. He didn't want to be around the game. Hanging out with his teammates became painful. The sport he loved had betrayed him.
But a local club in St. Louis saw something in him that Elijah couldn't see in himself yet.
The Invitation That Changed Everything
At 17, still reeling from losing his future, Elijah got a call from a club asking him to come help with their youth program. He was hesitant. Being around lacrosse hurt. But they were persistent.
"They were like, 'Hey, why don't you just come out, be around the kids, talk to the kids,'" Elijah remembers. "I ended up loving it."
The kids looked up to him. They hung on his words. And for the first time since his injury, Elijah felt like himself again—just in a completely different role.
"Right then, I completely fell in love with coaching."
He started with youth camps, then quickly progressed to coaching a travel team starting at U10. He stayed with those kids all the way to U14, watching them grow from finishing fourth in their city tournament to winning a Midwest Cup in Minneapolis.
"What helped me really buy into it was looking at each kid and trying to find a similarity to myself when I was their age," he explains. "Coaching off that similarity, finding middle ground and something in common to make them more coachable—not just assuming each kid is coachable, but trying to build that coachability."
Finding Success in a New Uniform
Elijah's reputation as a coach grew. When he moved to Houston, he got a call from The Woodlands Lacrosse Club—one of the best high school programs in Texas. He coached varsity alongside Anthony Demaio and Danny Dolan, both national champions from the University of Maryland, who came from similar programs where they shared mutual teammates, competitors, and coaches over the years.
"It was incredible being able to see how you can still be a part of that team through coaching," he says. "Your reputation as a good teammate, being coachable, knowing the game—that carries over into your 20s in a whole different state."
At The Woodlands, Elijah coached high school kids through the recruiting process, drawing on his own experiences. He could tell them things other coaches couldn't.
"These coaches recruiting you? I know them very personally. They know my parents, they know me. They want to see how you react on the sidelines when you don't score. They want to see how you talk to the ref when a call goes against you. They want to see you will your team, and yourself, to a win. That's what they're watching."
The team made a run to state. The kids bought in. And Elijah found something he'd lost years earlier: purpose.
The Lessons That Stick
Now living in Phoenix and working in tech sales, Elijah credits his coaching experience—and the youth sports that nearly destroyed him—for his professional success.
"In my interview, I told them how I coach—not only being able to communicate with 10 to 14 year olds and 15 to 18 year olds, but also parents, other directors, sponsors," he explains. "They interviewed 60 people who all talked about their degree, but somebody with that real-world experience of communicating with so many different types of people? They essentially gave me the job."
His approach to sales mirrors what he learned on the field and taught from the sidelines: resilience matters more than talent.
"I've seen so many people have two bad months in a row and they don't have that resilience to keep plugging through," he says. "They start projecting—'our marketing sucks,' 'the product's not good enough.' But having that resilience to keep pushing through is built at those ages, from U8 all the way up."
The Message He Wants Kids to Hear
Elijah worries about the current youth sports landscape, where NIL deals and sponsorships can reach even high school freshmen. He thinks it's easy to lose the core of what makes sports valuable.
"It's really easy to lose the team aspect, the community aspect, the family aspect," he says. "Kids focus on 'what can I do, I have to perform, I need to get recruited, I need a sponsorship.' Instead of being like, 'Hey, let's just focus on winning first. The rest is going to handle itself.'"
His advice to young athletes is simple but powerful: "If you feel that you know something or you have ideas, don't be afraid to share them. You're the one on the field next to your defender. Tell your coach what you're seeing so they can implement it into the game plan instead of doing it on your own."
And for kids who think their future is only about playing professionally? Elijah wants them to understand something he learned the hard way.
"Not everybody gets to play pro. Not everybody gets to play in college, regardless of the circumstance. But those relationships you learn—being able to fail, bounce back, be accountable, be a good teammate—that's what actually matters. Practice that when you're a kid, because winning and losing isn't as detrimental then as it is in your professional life."
Coming Full Circle
Elijah still plans to coach again once he's settled in Arizona. He misses being on the sidelines, seeing kids' faces when they realize they've never run that hard, never checked that hard, never gotten knocked down and gotten back up without looking to their parents on the sideline.
"Seeing their faces and all of that is my favorite feeling in the whole entire world," he says.
The game of lacrosse gave Elijah Myers everything—then took it all away—then gave him something even better: a purpose that doesn't depend on his own physical abilities, but on his ability to see potential in others and help them realize it.
"The game essentially gave me everything I've got going for me today," he reflects. "A great job, great friends everywhere. Whether I thought I would be playing or coaching, it all came from lacrosse."
Sometimes the best coaches are the ones who never got to finish their own playing careers. They're the ones who know what it's like to lose everything and have to rebuild. They're the ones who understand that sports aren't really about sports at all—they're about becoming the kind of person who can handle whatever life throws at you.
And that's a lesson worth more than any scholarship.
