As the 2025 NLL Draft inches closer to the starting line, box fans across borders are waiting on the edge of their seats to find out who the three rising stars the Toronto Rock will take with their unprecedented three-straight First Round selections. This year’s talent pool is full of exciting prospects from across North America, representing every corner of the British Columbia and Ontario Junior Lacrosse Leagues (BCJALL and OJBLL respectively), down to the many regional Leagues represented in the National Collegiate Box Series (NCBS) in the US. With so many League dreams coming to fruition, two players are fighting their way up from their non-traditional roots.
Representing the great American South and Southeast in this year’s draft, as well as the final graduating classes of the Limestone University Men’s Lacrosse Team, are teammates Titus Chapman and Zachary Terry. Despite their later introductions to the discipline of box lacrosse as compared to their Canadian and American Northeastern counterparts, have more than proved their skill and resolve over the years, contributing to the Upstate Collegiate Box Lacrosse League’s (UCBLL) Hawkeyes’ 2024 NCBS Championship Win, as well as Terry securing the title of both top point and goal scorer during the 2025 Series.
(Zach Terry, Hawkeyes vs Kings, NCBS 2025)
Terry, hailing from Tega Cay, South Carolina, began his athletics career as a hockey player, before he was introduced to field lacrosse by his sister and his parents, who played and coached respectively for the Lake Wylie Vipers. His father, Kevin Terry, now coaches at Nations Ford High School in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
“When I was younger, my sister played [lacrosse] for a year and then my parents were running these youth programs, so I said ‘oh, I’ll play lacrosse too,’ and I loved it,” Terry recalled. “I actually started off as a righty goalie before I transitioned to attack.”
While Terry was afforded the opportunity to learn the family business starting at a younger age, Chapman picked up the Medicine Game a bit later in life. Growing up just 20 minutes shy of Knoxville, Tennessee, Chapman was first introduced to lacrosse in the eighth grade by a classmate from Minnesota. “In Tennessee, lacrosse is not a very big sport,” Chapman explained. “He gave me my first lacrosse stick and introduced me to the game.”
This simple act of kindness would send Chapman down the collegiate path, eventually leading him to Limestone University in Gaffney, South Carolina. “I absolutely loved it, it was a great school, a great program,” he said. “I’ve been playing lacrosse for ten years now and it’s been the greatest blessing in my life so far.”
Terry, however, wouldn’t find his way to Limestone as easily as his Knoxville counterpart. During his freshman year of high school, Terry suited up for the NLL Jr. Swarm U15 team under Swarm head coach Ed Comeau, where he unfortunately suffered a season and near career-ending injury– a lacerated spleen that hospitalized him. But despite his grim situation, Terry found comfort and support in his teammates and the NLL’s player-first philosophy.
“Coach Eddie [Comeau] came and visited me in the hospital and that became one of my fondest memories,” he said.. “The fact that the NLL community cares so much and they’re there to take care of you meant the world to me.”
“After an intensive rehabilitation and a star-studded varsity career at Fort Mill High School, Terry would initially commit to and begin his Division II athletics career at Queens University in the heart of Charlotte, North Carolina. “I didn’t play [box] until my freshman year of college,” Terry recalled. “When I was about to transfer to Limestone University, my dad got an ad on Facebook for the UCBLL, so I actually went up to Rochester and I lived there during the season.”
Despite his roots in Lake Wylie and Fort Mill, Terry’s family actually originates in the home of the Knighthawks, the Flower City of Rochester, New York. “My parents grew up here, and now I’m here living their life in the summer, which is so cool.” Terry has since been making the trip to Rochester since the summer of 2022 to compete for his Hawkeyes’ ticket to the NCBS and pave his way to the NLL Draft. Terry’s extended stay in the Flower City also offered him the opportunity to learn box firsthand on the Seneca Nation Tonawanda Reservation as a player on the Tonawanda Braves.
“I’ve had a lot of help for the past four years getting into box from my coaches, Ryland Reese, Dan Coates, and Thomas McConvey,” said Terry. “[League Commissioner] Craig Rybczynski has also been a big help for me; those guys have been really helpful.”
After several successful seasons with the UCBLL, it wouldn’t be long before he began recommending the experience to his friends and peers. “My buddy, [Terry], he actually presented me with the opportunity to come up here and play [in the UCBLL] last summer,” Chapman explained. Though box lacrosse is still growing at the recreational and senior levels in the greater American South, Tennessee is now home to two North American Box Lacrosse League (NABLL) Senior A Teams, the Nashville Ignite and the Knoxville Shiners, whom Chapman suited up for briefly during the 2022 summer season.
Chapman’s introduction and speedy infatuation with the game of box lacrosse began innocently, recalling a similar story of admiration and amazement to that of many southern and southeastern players. “The day that I fell in love with box lacrosse, it was the Georgia Swarm versus the New York Riptide game in 2019 or 2018,” Chapman said. “I remember watching Lyle Thompson doing this diving rotation shot mid-air and scoring to send it into overtime, and it was in that moment that I knew I wanted to play box lacrosse.”
“It’s kind of like club basketball or club football, it’s not the same as your season,” said Chapman, explaining that despite box lacrosse’s still shaky foothold in the American South, his humble beginnings still presented him with the passion necessary to take the next steps in his development as a dedicated athlete between the boards. “I got to experience just the basic concepts of box with the Shiners, and then being invited up here by [Terry] was an even greater opportunity for me.”
Now with a foot in the door to the world of professional lacrosse, Chapman and Terry came to understand the possible lengths of their respective careers. For Terry, his defining moment that cemented the pro route as a possibility came from his ever-supportive father. “I had a conversation with my dad a couple years ago and we talked about how he would like to see me on a bigger stage,” he said. “He knows that I’m good enough.”
Additionally, Terry’s own experiences playing Junior and Senior level box lacrosse have shaped his opinions regarding the accessibility of the draft. Over the years, he has played alongside active and retired NLL players, including but not limited to the Buffalo Bandits’ Zack Belter, the Toronto Rock’s Nathan Grenon and the Las Vegas Desert Dogs’ Joel Watson– all three of whom Terry credits as three of his biggest supporters and mentors in the rink. “As soon as I got there, they helped me out, they’re just great guys to be around in the locker room, no matter what,” he said. “They’re not putting me down, they’re actually helping me because they want me to succeed, and I feel like there’s a lot of guys like that in the League and that’s something I’d like to explore.”
For Chapman, his time on the national stage as a player on the Brazilian Men’s National Team lit the fire for him to aim for even greater heights. “When I played for them in the first Sixes tournament, I realized how far I could go in this sport,” said Chapman. “I knew that with enough hard work and dedication, that I could make it to the pro level.”
However, though Chapman and Terry’s dedication to the game have carried them to far greater heights than Wednesday night pick-up leagues, their roots in non-traditional markets have still produced hurdles for the two to overcome over the course of their career.
“With lacrosse being not as big as other sports [in the South,] your work ethic, your dedication to the sport, you have to be obsessed with it,” said Chapman. “You have to play every day to have a fighting chance against these Northerners and Canadians that have been playing this game their whole lives.”
Additionally, the lack of resources and access to box or hockey specific facilities in the make the growth of the game and individual skill a major challenge for aspiring athletes. But similar to Chapman, the clear disparity in accessibility only served as an additional motivator for Terry. “There’s not really a lot of lacrosse, like there’s not even a box net [in Tega Cay],” he said. “There were not a lot of opportunities [to play box] growing up, and my parents gave me the opportunities to succeed and if I wasted those opportunities, I would feel like a failure to them.”
But their regional ties were the only first crack in their chipped shoulders. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of Division II and III schools but the bigger names are in Division I,” Chapman admitted. As part of Limestone University’s final graduating classes before its unceremonious closing at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year, as well as a pair of Division II products and northeastern transplants in a draft pool of the highest caliber, the need to set themselves apart from their draft competitors weighs heavily on their shoulders. “We just have to work harder.”
“I’ve always felt like I’ve always had a target on my back,” said Terry, recalling his tumultuous journey through the recruiting process and the transfer portal during prime and post-COVID years. Though unrecruited at the Division I level, he received offers from several of the top DII programs in North Carolina: Belmont Abbey College, Queens University and Wingate University.
But it wasn’t until he found a home at Limestone that Terry grew into the player he is today. “I had the help of [assistant coaches] Kevin Reisman, Pete Collins, Kendall Collins, and [head coach] Brendan Storrier, all of them shaped me to be a competitive guy,” he said. “Every time I’m playing a game, I’m just pissed off at everyone that’s not on my team because that’s just how they brought us up.”
With the explosion of recreational and Senior box leagues in the US and in the Southeast, especially as the NABLL continues its expansion in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, and the NLL continues to grow in popularity, Chapman and Terry have been presented with the unique opportunity to help foster a new generation of box athletes in their home states. “When they say this game is a medicine game, they are not joking,” said Chapman. “Have love for the game, which I think is one of the most important parts about the game of lacrosse, you get as much from the game as you give to the game, that’s how I’ve lived and defined my career.” As local products on the national stage, the two bring a fresh perspective to the hometown hero archetype, ushering in new heights for the youth players following behind them. “Looking at all the southern kids and being able to go home and tell them about my journey and what I’ve gone and done and seeing their eyes light up,” said Chapman. “Every time I talk to them, I tell them to just love the game more and more each time you play.”
But as their pre-draft jitters settle in over the coming weekend, their sights are set farther ahead of their names on the draft board. “I want to be a guy that gets called upon when a team needs a goal or when they need a play on offense, I want to be that guy,” said Terry. “No matter where I get picked or if I get picked, I’m going to work really hard so I can find a position on the team.”
The 2025 NLL Draft begins Saturday, September 6, at 1:00PM ET. Streaming exclusively on NLL+.
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Previously published by the NLL.]
Rob Lucchesi 
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