Cover Story: Why Everyone's Watching Mitchell Pehlke

The November edition of USA Lacrosse Magazine drops Nov. 3.

Here's a sneak peek at our cover story on Mitchell Pehlke — the 25-year-old YouTuber who's building a digital empire in the sport.

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IT’S 52 MINUTES PAST CLOSING TIME at Sammy’s Trattoria, perilously close to Mitchell Pehlke’s self-appointed bedtime of 10 p.m. He’s torn between two of the things he values most as a 25-year-old YouTube celebrity and entrepreneur.

His fans and his sleep.

“I hate working tired,” he says. “I hate doing anything tired.”

He’ll have a full stomach, at least. Restaurant owner Sammy Curreri pulled out all the stops for his twin sons’ favorite lacrosse personality. Platters overflowing with generous portions of crab toast, sausage and peppers, creamy Italian salad, rigatoni ala vodka, chicken parmesan and veal involtini. “That’s Petro’s favorite,” he says, referring to Johns Hopkins lacrosse legend Dave Pietramala. Then came the cannoli and zeppole.

A feast fit for a king — the king of lacrosse content, that is.

As the waitstaff disposes the last vestiges, Pehlke holds court with 10-year-olds Rocco and Vinci. He pulls out his phone and shows them the video that just dropped five hours ago. They play along, as if they had not already seen it. Tuesdays at 5 p.m. are appointment viewing in the Curreri household.

The latest Pehlke production, titled “Guess the Secret D1 National Champion,” is a 24-minute game show where he and his friends interrogate five masked former Division I lacrosse players and put them through a series of hilarious physical challenges to determine which of them actually won a national championship and who was lying. At the end, it’s Maryland’s Daniel Kelly unmasked.

“He delivers clean, entertaining content that’s a lot of fun,” Curreri says. “I have no worries whatsoever about what he puts out there for my kids and their friends to watch. I enjoy watching it also.”

When we last featured Pehlke in this magazine (“A Camera and a Dream,” March 2021), he was a sophomore at Ohio State balancing the demands of playing lacrosse in the Big Ten and populating a YouTube channel that had just surpassed 13,000 subscribers. For historical context, Charlotte North was introduced on the cover of that magazine as a “next-gen icon.” Four years fly by fast.

That summer, the NCAA enacted new rules that would allow student-athletes to earn income from their name, image and likeness (NIL). Freed from the shackles of compliance, Pehlke found immediate profitability in his eponymous brand and went all the way with it. Cameos, merchandise, camps — the more he put himself out there, the wider his audience grew.

Pehlke played a supporting role for the Buckeyes but was first on companies’ prospect lists for endorsements. Six days after the legislation was enacted, he signed with Degree Deodorant. A month later, STX came calling. Kyle Harrison was getting ready to retire and the Baltimore-based lacrosse equipment manufacturer was searching for a fresh face.

“Having elite-level players using your product at the highest level of the game — making the independent choice to wear the brand and use the brand’s products versus being steered there — is still meaningful. A lot of those players bear influence in ways that maybe Mitch does not,” says Justin McDonald, director of marketing at STX. “But our partnership with Mitch has made us look at those athlete partnerships differently. You do need to have a social media presence and invest in that to reach and influence the next generation of athletes.”

Today, Pehlke boasts more than 131,000 subscribers on YouTube, has nearly 128,000 followers on TikTok and is approaching 100,000 followers on Instagram. As Curreri implies, they are of all ages and demographics, whether you grew up watching Nickelodeon or Netflix.

Pehlke also hosts “The Mitchell Pehlke Lacrosse Show,” a Pat McAfee-style podcast on The Lacrosse Network that Premier Lacrosse League co-founder and O.G. lacrosse athlete-creator Paul Rabil pitched to him after he graduated in 2023. His summer camp series, The Mitchell Pehlke Lacrosse Experience, will expand to 20 cities during a seven-week tour next summer.

“When you’ve created something and you're so passionate about doing that thing, there is no burnout,” says Pehlke, who considers work-life balance a myth. “It’s a weird feeling to describe. You’re just so hungry and energized every single day. I wake up, and I cannot wait to entertain whoever’s out there. Nick Myers told us this on day one of my sophomore year. He got on the podium in the film room and was like, ‘In life, someone’s always chasing you.’ And I’ll never forget that. There’s some fifth grader out there who’s playing wall ball and going to pick up a camera one day to try to take my spot. I’m not letting that happen.”

Pehlke quotes Myers several times during a 90-minute sit-down interview at STX headquarters in Baltimore’s Pigtown neighborhood. But the two weren’t always simpatico. A meticulous coach who scripts every practice to the minute and values authentic connections in the locker room, Myers at first resisted Pehlke’s vlogs as an intrusion of that sacred space.

Then Pehlke shared with Myers the vision for his platform and reassured him that his brand of content could contribute positively not only to the program but also the sport. There’s no smut, cursing or alcohol — largely because Pehlke does not himself travel in tired lax bro tropes. Even his dalliance with Duke track star and influencer Emily Cole, a courtship borne of Pehlke’s response to a TikTok post of her asking for a date, proved tasteful and humorous.

“I always loved creating smiles on people’s faces,” Pehlke says. “Like, if I could make you laugh, bang, I did it. That made me happy.”

And when the team let loose Saturday night after a win, Pehlke retreated to his laptop in the attic to churn out his next video.

“There were some growing pains early,” Myers says. “Mitchell helped me evolve as a coach. I look at things differently than I did before Mitchell came into the program. And in some capacity, I’ve helped Mitch. That’s what’s beautiful about the relationship.”

Among Pehlke’s subscribers are Myers’ sons Mason, 15, and Zachary, 13. “There’s not a Pehlke video that Mason and Zach haven’t seen, and I’m proud to say that as a dad,” Myers says.    

Myers helped Pehlke establish a limited liability company. Pehlke returned the favor when he helped Myers set up an Instagram page for Mason, who next year will enter the recruiting cycle as a Class of 2028 prospect.

“Coach, let it rip,” Pehlke urged Myers over the phone as he finalized the profile in their hotel room during a summer tournament. “You got this.”

“If you’re 25 or older, you enter Mitchell Pehlke with skepticism. And he has felt that since day one,” Myers said. “But he doesn’t let it harden him. He wins you over. We live in a world where the new guy breaks into an area, we always want to find a way to tear him down. Mitch has felt that, and I love the way he’s weathered it. He’s just doing Mitch.”

By the time Pehlke graduated, he had earned the trust of the lacrosse establishment and mainstream media like the Big Ten Network. Now college coaches invite him to campus.

“They’re opening the door for me to come in and do a full-length piece on their program. But they know on the back end, every recruit’s going to see that video,” Pehlke says. “They’re essentially taking me in like a recruit, showing me the greatest 48 hours.”

Pehlke’s content has evolved from day-in-the-life streaming to documentary-style storytelling, with a healthy dose of what former Ohio State teammate and current TLN cohort James Hogan calls “YouTubery”— completing user-generated challenges, offering cash prizes and homing in on his next hyperbolic headline.

“He knows if you want to be the Beatles, you’ve got to keep making hits,” Myers says. “He did not want to be a guy who fizzled after college.”

The four most-viewed videos on Pehlke’s channel have come out in the last year, when he went undercover at high school and college tryouts posing as characters like long-haired California football transplant Liam Johnson, whose chirpy bid to play at Calvert Hall (Md.) is up to 1.8 million views.

“Mitch does an awesome job of telling a story. And I think that story can resonate through all ages,” says Providence men’s lacrosse coach Bobby Benson, who hosted the real-life Pehlke for a faux tryout coupled with a campus visit before the 2024 season. “He finds a way to energize the fan bases, make it youthful and make it humorous as well.”

Like Curreri and Myers, Benson has two sons — Tucker, 12, and Griffin, 10 — who never miss a Pehlke release.

“I hate the word influencer. I think of an influencer as someone who records TikTok dances,” Pehlke says. “There’s no substance in that. I want to build a brand, and the word creator has always resonated with me. I create merchandise. I created a business. I’m creating a lane to broadcast media. I created these camps. Creator is at the heart of who I am. I’m not an influencer. I’m a creator.”

Notice Pehlke doesn’t say manager. When it comes to Pehlke Productions, LLC, he’s one of one. And while he hopes to hire two full-time employees by the end of this year to help with editing and operations, he has no intentions of turning 9-to-5 anytime soon.

“Balance is the biggest lie if you want to build something special,” Pehlke says. “There is no balance in creating something. It’s a false reality.”

Comments like those worry Pehlke’s parents, both serial entrepreneurs who started businesses in the cutthroat D.C. market.

Kevin Pehlke, a former All-American lacrosse player at Virginia, started a commercial printing business while working out of the basement of the family home in Leesburg, Va. Jolynn Pehlke, meanwhile, had her own digital marketing firm and launched an IT services company when her younger son left for college.

“He doesn’t want the cubicle life. He’s kind of like me. He can’t sit still,” Kevin Pehlke says. “I started my business in the basement with two kids and a mortgage. When your back’s against a wall, you’re going to succeed. If you don’t, then what?”

Pehlke’s mother was the one who encouraged him to start making videos in the first place, following him around the Apple Store and Starbucks with a camera at Reston Town Center. They noticed his infatuation with first-generation YouTubers like Casey Neistat and Roman Atwood. He’d prop up his phone against the cereal box while eating breakfast.

“Your life is way more interesting than the dingdongs you watch,” she says in an edit that made it to YouTube shortly after he launched the channel in 2016.

“He’s got the look, he’s got the personality and he’s got this relentless drive that sets him apart. He is a machine,” Jolynn Pehlke says. “So driven. So disciplined. More than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Not that Pehlke doesn’t want to settle down one day. Part of the reason he keeps his videos clean is because he thinks of how they will age with him. And because his core audience consists of children and teens, like the camper who brought him beef jerky, trail mix and peanut butter cups because Pehlke said they were his favorite snacks in one of the first videos he produced.

And the Curreri twins, who finally let Pehlke go way past bedtime.

“The guy really loves what he’s doing,” Sammy Curreri says. “He wants to make the lacrosse world a better place.”