In less than four years, 21-year-old Dan Hardy says he’s aged a decade.

‘It seems like everything is just going by so fast, and so much has happened,’ Hardy says. ‘Good and bad.’

Hardy, a senior midfielder, has appeared on magazine covers and in the police blotter. He wears No. 22, Syracuse lacrosse’s most prominent jersey, shouldering a decades-old tradition. He has done so while struggling with injuries and scrutiny. He owns a national championship ring, and some regrets after winning the title. This fall, he almost squandered a final chance to convert his doubters.

Critics carp on blogs and online forums about why a player with his size (6-foot-4, 214 pounds) and his hype (the nation’s No. 2 recruit in 2005-06) can’t live up to his number’s reputation. Reporters probe him about the team’s potential, something no one can truly gauge. Opposing teams slap a long-pole defender on Hardy to shackle him.

All those pressures carry a familiar sting, going all the way back to childhood, say those who know him well. ‘People say hurtful things,’ said Bill Hardy, Dan’s father. ‘But it’s been happening since he was in eighth grade. Even younger than that. That just happens.’

Hardy enters his last college season hoping to earn a national title to call his own and establish himself as worthy of No. 22.

He leads midfielders in scoring for the No. 2 Orange (2-0), but not does serve a team captain. He starred at last year’s end, scoring eight playoff goals. In the offseason, doctors operated on his foot and the Syracuse police arrested him for drinking and driving.

As he waited to see if the university would suspend him, Hardy recalls, he lost confidence. He lost weight. He worried he would lose his senior season, too.

‘For a couple weeks,’ he said, ‘I pretty much gave up.’

But the school decided not to suspend him. Granted a second chance, Hardy vows he will not waste it. The arrest is now just another pothole on a career path pocked with them.

Said Hardy: ‘It just seems like a long road.’

***

When he walked into Manley Field House, the number was posted on his locker.

That’s how Dan Hardy found out that he would wear No. 22. There was no knighting ceremony, no pomp and circumstance regarding the digits. Just an 18-year-old in his the first week of fall practice, saying to himself, ‘OK, I guess I got it.’

After all, he had asked for it.

Hardy arrived at SU in a loaded recruiting class, with players like Matt Abbott, Kenny Nims and Pat Perritt. The number had been vacant for a season. Someone needed to fill the gap after the team missed the final four for the first time in 22 years. Hardy wore No. 22 his senior year at nearby Tully High School, when he produced 58 goals and 69 assists.

The coaches appreciated Hardy’s chutzpah. ‘You like to think that somebody has enough confidence to do that,’ assistant coach Roy Simmons III said. ‘You don’t want to go out and look to assign it to somebody.’

Hardy fit the bill. Both his father and brother had won national titles here. Dan knew the number’s guarantee of fame and inspection.

He was used to both. In middle school, he stood more than 6 feet tall and dominated the teens. Bill Hardy used to hear other parents jeer, ‘How many grades has that kid failed?’ By eighth grade, Dan played both varsity lacrosse and basketball.

Still, the coaching staff tried to reiterate the number’s magnitude. ‘That’s like wearing No. 44 here as a football player,’ Simmons said. ‘The expectations are out of sight.’

The number was sanctified by record book rewriters like Gary Gait, Charlie Lockwood and the Powell brothers. Gait, who now coaches the Syracuse women’s team, once racked up 70 goals in a season. Two-time Tewaaraton Trophy winner Michael Powell scored 307 career points, an Orange record. His brothers, Casey and Ryan, each tallied 287.

Two games into his senior season, Dan Hardy has scored 99 points.

‘I think he’s had a pretty good career for himself,’ said Tom Hardy, Dan’s brother and a team captain in 2002. ‘But living up to those standards is pretty tough.’

Fearing his size, defenses focused on him. Hardy learned early that he couldn’t chug past long-pole defenders with ease. ‘That’s been the biggest thing to adjust to, just the amount of attention you get,’ Hardy said. ‘You just got to learn how to handle it.’

He tinkered with his body, searching for the right profile. Before the team’s disaster in 2007, he bulked up 20 pounds. For 2008, he slimmed back down.

Injuries piled up. Last year, chronic ankle sprains damaged his foot. Bone spurs formed. Early in the season, the Hardy family met with the Syracuse coaching staff to craft a plan. Doctors said surgery wasn’t feasible if he wanted to play again during the season.

Hardy hobbled through the pain. He finished the year with 40 points – a good season for a guy on one foot. Yet he still struggled to break free from defenders. He disappeared for stretches. He heard chirps of discontent from fans.

‘I just kind of wanted to yell at people and be like, ‘Chill out, give me a break a little bit,” Hardy said. ‘But it was it is. They expect certain things.’

By midseason, Hardy found his stride. The injuries, coaches say, actually helped. As his body faltered, Hardy finally learned about the game he had once dominated.

‘He’s so smart now,’ Simmons said. ‘He’s probably the smartest midfielder we have in terms of finding people, finding space, knowing when to shoot, knowing when not to shoot.’

The coaches kept Hardy with the second midfield most of the year, then brought him back to the first unit during the playoffs. When the Orange faced Johns Hopkins for the national title, the Blue Jays put a long pole on fifth-year senior Steven Brooks, not Hardy.

Hardy scored three times, and Syracuse won its 10th national title. He tossed his equipment, shoulder pads and all, into the crowd. Fans hoarded Hardy’s gear, still damp with sweat.

A week later, doctors removed the bone spurs from his foot. He entered his senior season with peace of mind and time to rehabilitate.

‘It felt great at the end of last year,’ Hardy said. ‘I just kind of wanted to do the same things that I had been doing.’

***

Bill Hardy, Dan’s father, drove to campus on Saturday, Oct. 4 to officiate a Syracuse intra-squad scrimmage. When he pulled into the parking lot, a player on the team approached him.

‘Talk to Dan yet?’ the player asked.

‘No,’ Bill wondered. ‘Why?’

That’s how Bill learned of his son’s off-the-field lapse, one that threatened his senior year. After the scrimmage, father and son climbed into Bill’s car and talked. Dan told Bill that the night before he stopped by a player’s apartment. He had a couple drinks, then drove home. On the way, Dan ran a stop sign. Police pulled him over and wrote him up for driving while intoxicated.

As a parent, Bill said, ‘You go from concern to anger to ‘How do we get through this?”

The last part would be challenging. Hardy twisted in the wind for weeks, unsure if the university would suspend him.

The arrest shocked his system. Hardy remembers driving home often. He avoided campus. He shed about 15 pounds.

Friends, relatives and Hardy himself paint a grim picture of those days: Guilt and worry and shame swirled in his head.

And regret.

And fear.

His schoolwork suffered. ‘There was a point where I had about four papers that were completely late, because I would sit down to write them, and my mind would just go blank,’ Hardy said. ‘I literally couldn’t create a thought in my head.’ He added, ‘I almost just pulled myself out of school.’

Bill worried about his son moping around his apartment. Dan’s friends weren’t sure whether to offer comfort or space.

Hardy’s old roommate, senior midfielder Pat Perritt, labored through something similar following a 2007 arrest downtown. Perritt struggled in the days after, pulling out of school and returning home to Long Island. This time he tried, as Hardy had two years earlier, to give advice. But he knew how stress can hound someone.

‘People are like, ‘What an idiot, what was he thinking?” Perritt said. ‘They don’t realize, that person’s thinking the exact same thing, ‘I’m an idiot, what was I thinking?”

But Hardy received a reprieve. Unlike in 2007, when Perritt, John Carrozza and Sean McGonigle were all suspended by the university after arrests, Hardy was allowed to stay in school.

The charge was reduced to driving while ability impaired – a charge given to drivers with a blood-alcohol level between .05 and .07, according to New York State law, both Bill and Dan said. The school placed Hardy on probation, they said.

University officials cannot confirm this. The director of SU’s Judicial Affairs, Rami Badawy, said federal law prevents him from commenting on student cases. A report from the Syracuse police department was not available.

Allowed another opportunity, Hardy’s cloud lifted. It was gradual, but senior attack Kenny Nims, Hardy’s roommate, noticed. ‘I think he saw it as a second chance,’ Nims said. ‘And a huge weight lifted off his shoulders.’

Dan’s grades dipped, but he remained eligible. He ran himself into playing shape. He watched his diet. After winter break, he returned to campus ready.

‘The light went on,’ Bill Hardy said. He added, ‘He was more excited to come back this year than in any other year.’

***

In the hallway outside the Carrier Dome locker rooms, there’s a framed photograph of Dan Hardy. In the picture, he rises up to shoot, his arms anchored across his chest. They block his number from sight. He is just another Orange player, another cog in the machine.

This is not how he wants to be remembered. He wears No. 22 with pride.

‘It was always my dream to wear that number,’ he said. ‘I’ve worn it since I was a little kid, and I really wouldn’t have it any other way.’

Opponents still long-pole him. His ankles still trouble him. Fans still question him.

None of that bothers him much, Hardy says. He’s grown used to it. He wants the past to stay in the past. And he wants another national title.

‘I would still feel empty if we didn’t win one this year,’ Hardy said. ‘Because you have the memories from last year, but those memories, they’re kind of fading for me.

‘It’s a long time ago.’

ramccull@syr.edu

Published on February 23, 2009 at 12:00 pm