Meighan Garnsey thought she was sending a direct message.

“I wanted to tweet back directly to Kyle Harrison,” she explains. “I don’t understand Twitter very much and didn’t realize that the whole world would see what I wrote.”

They did. The day after the Redwoods fell 13-10 to the Chaos in San Jose, Harrison didn’t dwell on the loss. Instead, the Tewaaraton winner, Redwoods LC midfielder, and lacrosse icon called attention to the PLL’s most captivating rookie.

“This kid is a superstar in the making,” Harrison tweeted to his 28,000 followers accompanied by a photo of Ryder Garnsey in flight. “Competitive as hell, great teammate, skilled and fearless.”

After seeing the tweet, Meighan knew she had to find the photo she took twelve years ago but remembers like it was yesterday. She had been telling Ryder she was going to send it to Harrison, despite his repeated protests. She couldn’t resist any longer. She logged onto her Shutterfly account and called her daughter, Erin.

“What year were you living in Hermosa Beach?” Meighan asked.

After playing lacrosse at the University of New Hampshire, Erin moved to Southern California and coached the girls team at Redondo Union High School. She connected with Harrison through a mutual friend of his from Baltimore. When the Garnsey family visited from Wolfeboro, New Hampshire in 2007 she had a request: “Do you have any time to hang out and play lacrosse with my little brother?”

Harrison did. He spent an hour playing with Ryder on a nearby field.

“He was so gracious and took time out of his day to shoot with me,” Ryder recalls. “It was unbelievable.”

 He still keeps the K18 Hopkins gloves that Harrison gave him in his room at his family’s Cape Cod style home in Wolfeboro. Most of the décor pays homage to his favorite NFL team. There’s Redskins curtains, a Redskins bedspread, even a Clinton Portis Fathead on one of the walls. Garnsey is a diehard Boston fan in every other sport, but started rooting for the Redskins after the running back, who rushed for 29 touchdowns in two seasons with the Denver Broncos, was traded to Washington in 2004.

“From then on I realized it was a horrible mistake,” Garnsey said with a laugh. “But you can’t really change it up at this point.”

Beside the emblems of his fandom, there’s a framed poster. It features six members of the 2006 USA National Lacrosse team, including Harrison and Joe Walters. The details are fuzzy, but Meighan knows she prodded Ryder to get in line for their autographs at some type of clinic.

“Ryder, Good Luck!” Harrison wrote in silver Sharpie. “Dream Big!” Walters added.

“You showed him those qualities first hand, giving him a private lesson when he was 10 years old,” Meighan replied to Harrison’s tweet along with the now viral photo. “You and Joe Walters are displayed prominently on his wall to this day. He has looked up to both of you forever.”

“I pretty much cry about it every day,” Meighan says when she thinks about her son playing with the likes of Harrison and Walters. “Ryder is living his dream.”

Her son’s reaction was expected by those who know him best and a bit less sentimental.

“Mom!” he tweeted.

“Ryder just hates attention brought to himself,” Meighan says. “Especially not his mom bringing him attention.”

***

The idea of the kid who loathes the limelight is hard to reconcile with Garnsey’s persona on the field. The majority of his plays fall into two categories: improbable and impossible. The unimaginable for most of us looks routine for him. He appears to process the game at a different speed. He sees possibilities you didn’t even know existed. His first assist this summer was a no-look lever pass to Matt Kavanagh. At the All-Star skills challenge in Los Angeles he tried to score with a stick in each hand. For the finale he planned an alley-oop from Kavanagh off of a prop basketball hoop he got from his aunt. Garsney didn’t attempt it because he failed to advance to the final. Every weekend he takes the field though feels like a skills showcase.

"He is one of the more creative players I have ever coached," Redwoods Head Coach, Nat St. Laurent, says.

Garnsey displays a carefree confidence and joy that most people conclude is bravado.

“I think there is no doubt people make some unfair assumptions about him,” St. Laurent says. “I'll tell everyone in the country I think they are dead wrong. He is extremely selfless and a great teammate.” Garnsey’s highlight reels at Brewster Academy and Andover make the AND 1 Mixtape look tame. He launches himself at the crease the way Portis dove into the endzone.

 “Bro, he’s shooting in midair,” Chaos LC defenseman Jarrod Neumann said, incredulously, last weekend after he earned a minute penalty for leveling Garnsey mid-dive. The goal counted. It was Garnsey’s third of the game, his second consecutive hat-trick, and his eighth goal in the last three games.

His gait as he bobs from side to side lands somewhere between a shuffle and a saunter. Then there’s the cellys. The Stanky Leg at Andover. The Dead Fish, which Garnsey learned from playing FIFA, then pulled out after he scored the game winner in overtime against Virginia during his sophomore year at Notre Dame.

“It’s hard to put into words,” Meighan Garnsey says. “It’s almost like he’s a different person when he’s on the field.”

***

While his mom believes Ryder possessed confidence since the day he was born, he developed his signature flair on a 10 by 25 foot wooden wall in the Garnsey’s backyard. Ryder’s father, Fred, who later coached Ryder at Brewster Academy, built the wall when, Charlie, who’s thirteen years older than Ryder, first took up the game in high school. On the wall there’s a painted outline of a goal. The top corners are cut out and replaced with mesh pockets. Whenever Garnsey missed, the ball rolled back, like an invitation to try again.

He embraced the challenge.

“He's the most competitive person that I've come across,” says Timmy Phillips, who played midfield at Notre Dame and is one of Garnsey’s best friends.

The arena doesn’t matter. Whether it’s an NCAA playoff game or Monopoly, Garnsey must win. When he and a couple Irish teammates visited Phillips at his family’s summer house in South Jersey, they played Spikeball. Things escalated.

“He’s calling you out on a rule and yelling at you from the first point of  the game,” Phillips says. “It’s like, dude, relax, we’re on the beach.”

Growing up in the Wolfeboro, known as the oldest summer resort in America and has no stoplights, Garnsey focused his competitive drive on the wall. When the Redskins lost, he was out at the wall. When it snowed, he used yellow and orange balls. He’s memorized the tendencies of how the ball bounces off particular spots like a great golfer who knows a putting green’s contours. Fred Garnsey replaced the front section of plywood every year, because Ryder practiced so often he regularly wore it down.

His accuracy was clear last weekend in San Jose when he ripped a low to high shot. It grazed Mark Glicini’s helmet and hit the top right corner.

“I have never been the biggest, fastest, or strongest guy on the field,” says Garnsey, who’s listed at 5’9” and 176 pounds. “So I’ve always known that my stick skills and my creativity is going to be the avenue that I have to take if I’m going to be successful.”

He got his first glimpse of what was possible on the lacrosse field when he visited his brother at Syracuse University. Garnsey was in the Dome when Mikey Powell pulled off a front flip against Massachusetts in 2004. The Youtube video titled “Mike Powell Syracuse lacrosse highlights” that has over 1 million views was Garnsey’s textbook. He talks about it the way cinephiles discuss The Godfather. He says he’s watched the clip at least 100 times.

“All the ridiculous things he's able to do, all the one handed passes, all the diving goals, that's all scripted in his head,” Phillips says. “He’s on the field an hour before practice starts and an hour after trying stuff like that. It doesn't happen by luck.”

***

The play that St. Laurent feels best demonstrates Garnsey’s next level lacrosse IQ, isn’t a flashy goal or assist. It’s a turnover. During the second quarter of the Week 7 matchup between the Redwoods and Atlas, Garnsey carried behind the crease. With three seconds left on the shot clock, he didn’t launch the ball into the corner and retreat. He tossed it at Atlas rookie defender Cade Van Raaphorst hoping he’d touch the ball, reset the shot clock, then steal it back. The ruse almost worked.

 “I kind of love that,” NBC Sports Analyst, Ryan Boyle, said on the broadcast. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.”

Garnsey’s teammates and coaches all have stories about when they realized the undersized attackman with absurd stick skills was different. Phillips remembers their first practice during the fall of their freshman year at Notre Dame when Garnsey executed an around the world assist.

“It was completely unnecessary,” Phillips says. “But that’s just Ryder being Ryder.” St. Laurent cites a pull pass Garnsey threw in practice before Week 1 at Gillette Stadium. “Wow,” St. Laurent thought then. “This kid is going to be special.”

A month earlier there were doubts whether anyone would have the chance to watch Garnsey. In January he was ruled academically ineligible for the 2019 spring semester. He wasn’t sure if he would play “meaningful” lacrosse ever again. He spent the spring on the practice squad, wasn’t allowed to travel with the team, and watched home games while standing on the sideline.

“When something is such a big part of you like lacrosse is for me and you’re not able to do it, it makes you think about what you’re willing to sacrifice to get it back into your life,” Garnsey said.

Each week he was tasked with mimicking the opponent’s left attackman. One week he was Jeff Teat. Another he was Michael Krause. Notre Dame defenseman Hugh Crance had his hands full every day. Phillips says Garnsey never complained and that “he was doing everything he absolutely could to make the team better. He was chatting up with younger attackmen that maybe got some time. He found other ways to help throughout the season.”

***

On April 23rd Garnsey stayed up long after the Bruins defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-1 in Game 7 of the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. He watched the entire PLL draft, hoping he’d hear his name called, especially by the Redwoods. There was no such luck.

“Damn,” Garnsey texted Redwoods LC attackman and former Notre Dame great Matt Kavanagh. “Pretty jealous of the guys you picked up.”

“Don’t worry,” Kavanagh assured him. “Your time will come.”

Kavanagh insists Garnsey would have been a first round pick if he played his entire senior year. The uncertainty whether Garnsey would try to come back for a fifth year plummeted his draft stock.

“We didn’t know what was going on at Notre Dame, so with only four draft picks you don't want to take one on a question mark,” St. Laurent says.

Those doubts disappeared once Notre Dame made the playoffs. Garnsey became eligible because as Ty Xanders of Inside Lacrosse reported: “the possibility existed that he would potentially be able to suit up for the playoffs if his spring semester grades were above the eligibility threshold, as First Round weekend came days after exams wrapped up at Notre Dame.” Garnsey didn’t start against Johns Hopkins in the first round. He still managed three goals, including a backhand leaping dive that was the ultimate exclamation point.

 “News Flash,” US Lacrosse Magazine tweeted. “Ryder Garnsey is back and making cool plays again.”

“Ryder Garnsey would not have suited up today if not for his work ethic and the way he handled himself throughout the entire season,” Phillips recalled Notre Dame Head Coach, Kevin, telling the whole team after the Irish toppled John Hopkins 16-9. Garnsey topped the performance next week when he had four goals and two assists in an overtime loss to Duke.

After Garnsey entered the PLL player pool, St. Laurent acted fast.

“When we saw him sitting there, we went after it,” St. Laurent said.

The Redwoods selected Garnsey off the waiver wire and he signed with them on May 29th. He made the active roster for Week 2 then started his first game in Week 3 against the Chaos in Chicago. He hasn’t looked back.

“Ever since he's been in the lineup I feel like it's been one or two plays where you're just like, I don't even know what just happened,” Kavanagh says. St. Laurent praised Garnsey’s willingness to accept his role coming in as a rookie and has noticed he’s become more dominant throughout the summer. He’s grown more comfortable demanding the ball and initiating two-man games with veterans like Walters.

“The amount of trust we're putting in him as a rookie, I don't know if there's a lot of coaches who can say that they do that,” St. Laurent says. “We had to trust Timmy Troutner, who earned it and got the starting job. We didn't necessarily have to trust Ryder, but when he showed up right away, we knew, here are the keys, go have some fun. We have so much trust and confidence in him. It’s really refreshing to be able to do that with a first year player.”

St. Laurent believes Garnsey is the rookie of the year.

****

While Phillips says that Garnsey epitomizes the motto “There’s Always a Scoreboard,” that former Notre Dame defensive coordinator Gerry Bryne always used, there’s another saying that holds a special place. It’s the reason why Garnsey wrote the letters AWL on a piece of tape on the chin bar of his helmet. They stand for Aren’t We Lucky?

The saying comes from Garnsey’s grandfather on his mother’s side--Dr. William Joseph Dignam. He went by Bill. Garnsey called him Bups.

“He was an incredible man,” Meighan Garnsey says.

A lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Dignam was one of the founding members of the OB/GYN department at the UCLA Medical School and joined the faculty in 1953.

“He was devoted to his patients,” a memorial tribute to Dignam, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 87, reads. “And estimated that he had been the attending physician at 30,000 births.”

The tribute lists too many awards to mention.

On his way to work each morning, Dignam would stop in at Corpus Christi Church in Pacific Palisades. While kneeling in a pew, he told the priest who walked by the same thing every day, rain or shine.

 “It’s another beautiful day,” Dignam would say. “Aren’t we lucky.”

It’s the Garnsey’s family motto. Garnsey’s older brother and sister each have the phrase tattooed on the middle of their backs. When Garnsey turned 18, he got one too.

Earlier this week, after he spending an hour and a half practicing on the wall, he sat in his room with its Redskins curtains and the poster of his lacrosse idols. When he  reflected on the dramatic shifts of this past year, he was reminded of Bup’s phrase. Garnsey thinks it’s about “being grateful for the things we have.”

“Luckily it all worked out,” Garnsey said of the sport he started playing when he was four and has been obsessed with ever since. “There was a while where I was pretty nervous, but I’m playing now and doing what I love. I couldn’t be happier.”