OSHAWA, Ontario – It’s not unusual to see connections in the lacrosse world – family members playing together and high school teammates reuniting in college. Matt Campbell and Connor Kirst might be taking it to another level.
The duo went to Delbarton (N.J.) together, reunited at Villanova, play together on the Boston Cannons in the Premier Lacrosse League and are now playing on the U.S. Men’s Sixes National Team with Olympic dreams in their eyes. Campbell and Kirst helped the U.S. take another step towards Olympic qualification with a 25-10 victory over Puerto Rico on Thursday night.
The U.S. is now 2-0 and wraps up pool play against Jamaica on Friday afternoon at 4:30 pm on World Lacrosse TV. A victory would lock up a spot in Sunday’s gold medal championship game. The top five teams from this event will qualify for next year's World Lacrosse Sixes Championships in Colorado Springs.
Puerto Rico gave the U.S. a strong test early on Thursday, taking a 4-3 lead in the first quarter before a Logan McNaney save helped kickstart a U.S. run of five straight goals. By halftime, the U.S. had taken an 11-5 lead.
Joey Spallina finished with double-digit points for the second straight game, scoring five times while adding five assists to earn game MVP honors. He leads the tournament with 21 points in just two games. Coulter Mackesy also scored five goals and Michael Sowers had four goals and three assists.
The Delbarton duo of Campbell and Kirst also made big contributions. Campbell had a pair of goals and Kirst had four goals and two assists.
Campbell made his sixes debut in the U.S. program at the USA Lacrosse Experience in Indianapolis, where he led the team with 14 goals. A first-team All-American at Villanova as a senior in 2023, his game has continued to blossom at the professional level. In 2025, he won the Golden Stick Award as the leading scorer in the PLL’s Championship Series in the sixes format and was then named the league’s Midfielder of the Year in the summer.
“He’s a dog,” Kirst said.
Kirst, who was a captain at Delbarton along with Campbell's cousin, T.J. Comizio, has already made his mark in U.S. national team history, scoring the game-winning goal in a victory over the Haudenosaunee Nationals at the 2024 World Lacrosse Box Championships, a goal that sent the U.S. to the gold medal game at the box championship for the first time ever.
Kirst, who plays professionally in both the NLL and PLL, would like to make more history, specifically at the Olympics. He’s always been drawn to the team sports and remembers watching hockey on the TV during school.
Campbell also has vivid memories of the watching the Olympics in a back room during the summer in Cape Cod.
“I get really emotional watching the Olympics,” Campbell said. “You can see how emotional the athletes get and you can see the more than four years of work they’ve put in.”
The work happens behind the scenes, both individually and during training camps and time spent together like the U.S. men’s team has recently done in Buffalo and now in Canada. Kirst likens it to “summer camp” where the team gets to bond. Campbell noted the unique atmosphere of sixes where there are only 12 players on the squad.
They’re all chasing the same individual goal – to make the Olympic team – and the same team goal – to bring home gold.
In their youth days, the Olympics made memories in their minds, but lacrosse was not a part of those memories. The sport’s inclusion in the LA28 Games has changed the picture.
“It’s a dream, but now it’s reality,” Campbell said. “At events like this it gets more real.”
