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Epple Invited To U.S. National Team Tryouts

June 14, 2017

By Robby Hamman

NOTRE DAME, Ind. — Recent Notre Dame men’s lacrosse graduate Garrett Epple has been added to the pool of candidates trying out for the 2018 U.S. men’s national team. Epple will be joining former teammates Sergio Perkovic, Matt Kavanagh and Matt Landis. The tryouts will be held July 10-12 at the new U.S. national team’s training center at US Lacrosse headquarters in Sparks, Maryland.

Epple (Cockeysville, Maryland) was a staple in the Irish defense during the 2017 campaign. The senior led the team in caused turnovers with 27 and ground balls with 47 over Notre Dame’s 15 games during the 2017 season. Epple earned two ACC Defensive Player of the Week honors this season for the job he did against Michigan (February 26) and No. 1 Maryland (March 4).

The defenseman’s best performance of the season came against the Terrapins. Epple shut down Maryland’s prolific attackman Matt Rambo, holding him scoreless in the game, and caused four turnovers.

“Initially, a group of 60 players were identified and selected from a large application pool,” said Kevin Ankrom, director of high performance for US Lacrosse. “After the completion of the 2017 college season, there was an opportunity to identify some additional collegiate athletes to invite to our player pool. I believe that we have added a number of outstanding players to our pool to give them a look and experience of a U.S. team tryout. This opportunity also gives us a mechanism to establish and identify our high-performance athlete pathway, which will tie into our high-performance strategy for the national team program moving forward.”

Following the initial round of tryouts, U.S. head coach John Danowski and his staff will follow up with additional tryouts and training weekends at US Lacrosse on the weekends of Sept. 1-4 and Oct. 6-9 in preparation for next summer’s Federation of International Lacrosse World Championship. The FIL Men’s World Championship will be held in Netanya, Israel from July 12-21, 2018.

Since 1967, the U.S. has won gold or silver medal at every men’s international world championship in field lacrosse. The U.S. won gold in 1967, 1974, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2010. The U.S. finished as the runner-up to Canada in 1978, 2006 and 2014.

For more information on the U.S. men’s national team, visit uslacrosse.org/teamusa. Follow the team on social media @uslacrosse and use #USAMLAX on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube.The U.S. is coming off of a silver medal finish at the 2014 FIL World Championship in Denver. The FIL recently announced that the 2018 world championship was moving from England to Israel. The exact dates and location will be announced later this month.

— ND —

The University of Notre Dame men’s lacrosse team pursues excellence on and off the field through the three pillars in which the program is built: Character, Culture & Community. These three foundational values guide the promise of the program, which is to provide its student-athletes with the most compelling and enriching experience in all of college athletics. Through academics, competition, service and travel, the program aims to immerse its players in situations that enhance their student-athlete experience to help them become the people, students and teammates they aspire to be.

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Robby Hamman joined Fighting Irish Media as athletics communications assistant director in September 2016, coordinating efforts for the volleyball and men’s lacrosse program. Hamman is a 2010 graduate of Bethel College, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in sport management and business administration and earned his master’s degree in business administration from Defiance College in 2013.