Jack Hannah Brings Ohio Grit to USA Sixes Camp, Atlas Cup

If ever there existed a case of the pot calling the kettle black, it was the time Bill Tierney told Jack Hannah he needed to relax and enjoy the game more.

A Hall of Fame coach known as much for his intensity as his seven NCAA championships, Tierney had called Hannah into his office at the University of Denver’s Peter Barton Lacrosse Stadium to discuss the perils of perfectionism.

The kid could “put the ball in a coffee can” with his shooting accuracy, Tierney said. But if he missed even one shot, he would analyze it to death.

Even now during Philadelphia Waterdogs walk-throughs — the breezy Friday night practices that are meant to shake off the rust before a Premier Lacrosse League weekend — Hannah slams his stick into the turf whenever he makes a mistake.

Tierney has witnessed this maniacal behavior for the last seven years.

“You could do a psychological thesis on this guy because it’s deep, and it’s intricate,” Tierney said. “He’s so heady. I’ve often referred to Jack as the most competitive player I’ve ever coached in 52 years of coaching, which is a good thing but can also be self-defeating because he’s so tough on himself.”

This coming from the coach who in a recent PLL documentary said losing is worse than death. Hannah said he’s heard that one before.

“He was telling me I had to enjoy the game more. I told him I’d rather be a depressed winner than a happy loser,” Hannah said. “As much as he likes to say I'm the most competitive person he's met, he's the most competitive person he's met. Our brains were in a similar place.”

Hannah can’t pinpoint why he’s wired this way. His mother, Vanessa, probably has something to do with it. She played tennis collegiately but to this day he has never seen her swing a racket. When her skills diminished, she refused to step foot on a court again.

She’s also the one who told him after he was cut from the eighth-grade basketball team that hard work does not always pay off — that you could put 10,000 hours into mastering a craft and still there could be someone who says you’re not good enough. That’s life, she said.

“That really set a tone for me in my life,” Hannah said. “It was always a goal of mine to make sure no one was ever able to say that to me again.”

Despite being just 5-foot-1 at the time, Hannah eventually made his high school basketball (and football) teams. But he poured his heart and soul into lacrosse. The Ohio Athletic High School Association started sanctioning the sport in 2017, Hannah’s senior year at Milford High School in suburban Cincinnati.

Hannah had grown to 6-foot-1 by the time Tierney saw him play at a club tournament in Colorado. Tierney and his eventual successor Matt Brown built a perennial national championship contender at Denver on the backs of late bloomers from non-traditional lacrosse locales. Hannah fit the bill. He committed in February of his senior year, becoming the first Division I lacrosse player from Milford.

When Hannah’s body finally caught up to his brain, no one could stop him. He was the Big East Midfielder of the Year in 2021, a USILA first-team All-American in 2022 and the No. 14 overall pick by the Waterdogs in the PLL draft.

He was also the rare American field player who could excel in box lacrosse, latching on to the indoor discipline while competing in the National Collegiate Box Series and going No. 31 overall in the National Lacrosse League draft.

Hannah, 26, was an NLL Rookie of the Year finalist in 2023, earned All-World honors competing for the U.S. National Team at the 2024 World Lacrosse Men’s Box Championship and this year got his first PLL All-Star nod as one of the league’s highest-scoring midfielders.

Even though he plays for pro teams in Las Vegas and Philadelphia and lives in Denver, Hannah still identifies primarily as an Ohioan — a Buckeye State badge of honor he’ll carry with him this weekend when he competes for the U.S. Men’s Sixes National Team in the Atlas Cup at USA Lacrosse headquarters in Sparks, Md.

If Hannah plays lacrosse angry, fewer things fuel his hate fire more than when someone characterizes his sport as one of privilege.

“I passionately hate the rich white kid [reputation] of the sport,” he said. “Where I’m from, there are not many rich white kids. I love Ohio. I love the Midwest. It’s a different sports culture. If it’s sunny, we’re going outside and we’re hitting each other. Some places — even Colorado where I live now — there’s just too many nice things to do.”

Hannah’s father, Paul, is a welder who grew up on a farm in Wilmington, Ohio, not far from the meme-spawning “Hell is Real” sign on Interstate 71 they’d pass when driving from Cincinnati to Columbus. His mother is from Dublin, Ohio, and grew up with an appreciation for sports thanks to Hannah’s grandfather, Charles Mand, who was the director of the Ohio State School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation.

“She’s kind of a freak athlete,” Hannah said. “She can throw a football 40 yards.”

Hannah has two brothers, Will and Alex. He’s the middle child. That only added to his motivation to excel in sports.

“I had a lot of short, angry kid syndrome when I was young. It’s still there,” he said. “I spent a good decade-plus of my athletic career being middle tier or bottom of the barrel in sports.”

Now Hannah has his sights sets on the absolute pinnacle of lacrosse: the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. This week will mark his first time playing for the national team in the sixes discipline, the rapid-fire 6v6 version of the sport that the International Olympic Committee approved for the Summer Games. Lacrosse will be contested as a medal sport for the first time since 1908.

“It’s above and beyond the hardest lacrosse team that anybody's ever going to make,” Hannah said. “It’s going to be 12 guys, and it’s going to be impossible to take their names out of the history books. That’s as important as it gets.”

Hannah admits it’s hard for him to put PLL and NLL rivalries aside when suiting up for the U.S. He had to stifle his resentment when the New York Atlas championship victory party made its way to Danny Logan’s wedding this past weekend in San Diego. He’ll be on the same side as Logan (who was a year ahead of him at Denver) and PLL MVP Connor Shellenberger for the Atlas Cup.

Hannah wants to make a positive first impression on the USA sixes staff, which includes head coach Andy Shay and assistant coach Tony Resch. They’ve invited 24 players to this week’s training camp.

Half will compete in the Atlas Cup — the U.S. plays Puerto Rico (Friday 7 p.m. EDT), Canada (Saturday 8:30 p.m. EDT) and the Haudenosaunee Nationals (Sunday 1:30 p.m. EDT) — and half will play at the World Lacrosse Super Sixes tournament Oct. 10-12 in Oshawa, Ontario.

With stakes this high, Hannah said, now is not the time to play nice.

“It’s like a devil and an angel on the shoulder,” he said of his competitive nature. “It’s really helpful sometimes, but I’ve got to manage it. Most people want to be able to flip that switch. My switch is always flipped on.”