Every athlete dreams of playing on the largest stage of his sport. Football players dream of playing in the Superbowl; Baseball players dream of the World Series; Soccer players dream of the World Cup.

As fans of lacrosse know, professional lacrosse is not nearly as popular as the college game. This makes the NCAA Division One Final Four and Championship games played over Memorial Day Weekend the biggest stage in the sport.

I had dreamed of playing in the Final Four as a kid and when I was coming out of high school I was fortunate enough to be recruited to play at the University of Massachusetts by coach Greg Cannella. Going to UMass, I knew they had never been to a Final Four, but I also knew that Umass was a very strong program and there was a chance to get there.

UMass had come close twice in my college career, coming up short in the playoffs both times. My Freshman year we lost to Maryland and my Junior year we lost to eventual National Champions Johns Hopkins.

In 2006, the team was different, however. Everyone on the team knew it was a special group, a group and a program that had so much to prove to the lacrosse world, to each other, and to everyone who ever doubted us. A group that, although not as talented, not as big, not as fast, and not as experienced, had something which many teams either lacked or didn't have enough of. What I'm taking about is what makes any team successful, its drive, its heart, and its edge. The edge of this UMass team was stronger and larger than any one of us. The edge, I'm convinced, is what carried the 2006 UMass team to a place where no other UMass team had ever gone before.

We got to the Final Four after a somewhat average regular season. We lost 4 regular season games, a few more losses than we had hoped for. What we really did well in 2006 was win our playoff games. We were an unseeded team in the playoffs and had to travel to Ithaca, New York to take on #6 seeded Cornell in the first round. We were fortunate to knock them off in a close game.

The next week we played the #3 seed Hofstra and won, making an enormous comeback and winning the game in overtime. That was a huge win for us personally and also for the program as a whole. Hofstra was on a 17 game winning streak coming into that game and even had a 5 goal lead in the second half before we found our edge. The win we pulled over Hofstra felt like destiny.

The team left for the Final Four on Thursday, one day earlier than we normally leave for a Saturday game. On the bus ride down, we watched the movie Rocky. This was only fitting; the characteristics of our situation were so similar to those in the movie, being an underdog and all. It was also appropriate that we were headed to Philadelphia, Rocky's hometown.

I had never been to Philadelphia before, and I had never been inside a professional football stadium either. As we got close to the city after a 6 hour bus ride, my teammates began pointing in the direction of the Linc-the home of the Philadelphia Eagles-and as it began to appear from behind the neighboring buildings and highways I can remember feeling a rush of adrenaline.

When we practiced the next day, I remember not being able to catch my breath. It wasn't because of the heat (although it was a fairly humid day) and it wasn't because I was tired (I was more awake and alert than at any other time in my life) it was that I just could not get over my surroundings. There were thousands and thousands of empty seats that would soon to be filled with screaming fans. I made up my mind right then that I had to stop feeling out of breath. I was heading for an enormous physical test and an even bigger mental test, one that I had been waiting for my entire life. I could not let myself down. I could also not let my teammates down either. They had also been waiting their lives for this too.

On Saturday morning, we boarded the bus for the stadium. It was May 27, 2006, a day I hope that I never forget as long as I live. I remember listening to my iPod on the bus, which I always do before a game. As we approached the stadium, I looked out the window and could see thousands of tailgaters, kids of all ages tossing the lacrosse ball around the parking lots. When you play college lacrosse, you are used to seeing a few thousand fans at a game and this was easily more than ten thousand tailgaters. This was no ordinary game.

In the locker room our preparation continued. Everyone on the team tends to go their own way and do their own thing before the game starts. Some guys take walks around the stadium, others sit near their locker and listen to music, some string sticks, some may goof around and joke with others. Everyone is different, and after playing with each other every day for years, everyone respects one another's space and pre-game rituals.

I had planned to do something special before the game began, it was something that I knew that no matter what the outcome of the game was that this would make me happy. During the week before the Maryland game and that morning too, I strung a stick and taped it the way I like my sticks taped. I planned to give the stick to a kid, hoping this kid would be with his father and they could share the moment together.

When I was out on the field for warm ups about an hour before the game, I took a minute to scan the crowd for a kid. I saw a boy who was about 12 leaning over a railing eagerly watching us warm-up and noticed that his father was wearing a UMass shirt. I ran over to the railing, and asked the kid who he was rooting for. He said he was pulling for the team that was going to win, UMass. I held the stick up to the boy, and he looked at me as if he didn't know what to do. I said "take it, it's yours." The boy and the father looked at each other took the stick and gave me a quick thank you. I ran back into the locker room for our final preparations before the game, thinking there was a chance that boy and his dad had just given us some good luck.

Running out onto the field at the start of the game was one of the best moments ever. The cowbells that our fans always ring were louder than I had ever heard them before. I can also remember our warm-ups being extremely crisp, which surprised me because I had anticipated some of the younger players being taken back by their surroundings, possibly intimidated and nervous. But there were no nerves on the field from any UMass player that day. We all had come to play.

As the game began, I can remember thinking we were sharp-as sharp in the game as we were in warm-ups. If you have played any kind of sport, you know what I mean. There are days when individuals (and entire teams in fact) play great. There are also days when they play average or worse. Fortunately, no one was average on the UMass team playing in the 2006 the Final Four.

The first time we scored, the sound of that crowd almost scared me it was so loud. Let me tell you, 50,000 fans can make a lot of noise, especially when a team that is expected to lose is winning. After a while, I just had to block out the sound of the crowd so that I could concentrate and play.

As the game went on, I felt like we really dominated Maryland. Although the score was relatively close the entire game, it seemed like we beat them from the first whistle.

As we entered the locker room at half time (up 3-2) one of my team mates started to scream "nobody thought we would be here, not in a million years!!!" We all joined in yelling and carrying on. We felt like we were on our way. Our edge had gotten us this far. We just needed to play one more good half of lacrosse.