The Michigan men’s lacrosse team, coached by Kevin Conry, doesn’t step on the “M” in the locker room.
It’s an extension of the superstition in the Diag that prospective and incoming students at the university learn about the second they set foot on campus. And it’s one that senior attacker Bo Lockwood learned about the hard way, at the very beginning of his playing career with the Wolverines.
“I didn’t know that right away,” Lockwood told the Michigan Daily. “It happens to a lot of people — you step on it right away, and you gotta go down into a ‘single’, as we call it. Which is (when) we just do one push-up to kind of reset our memory.”
Not stepping on the “M” is a tradition steeped in respect — respect for the significance of the logo, and the decades of history of Michigan athletics it represents.
And by carrying that tradition into his locker room, Conry is instilling his own culture of respect in his team, by reminding them the weight of the colors that they play for. It’s that same respect for tradition, alongside a deep respect for the individuals he coaches, that has served as the cornerstone of his coaching career and allowed him to make his programs his own.
***
Conry’s East Coast roots run deep. A native of Long Island, New York, he at one point enjoyed the quintessentially Northeastern experience of working in a deli.
“I make a mean chicken cutlet sandwich,” Conry told the Daily.
The East Coast’s status as the hotbed of collegiate lacrosse made it an ideal spot from which Conry could launch his career in the sport. And the respect for tradition that characterizes Conry’s career bloomed at one of the most storied programs on the East Coast, and in all of college lacrosse — Johns Hopkins. At Johns Hopkins, Conrey attended and played lacrosse from 2001 to 2004.
The Blue Jays boast 44 total championships, the most of any college lacrosse program. Though Conry played a small role throughout his four years with Johns Hopkins, his time with the Blue Jays still left an indelible mark on him and helped shape his aspirations in the sport.
“By no means was I the best player on that roster, or a monster contributor, but what I did believe in is the path, and the process, and the coaching, and the development, and being caught up in the history and tradition to know that you’re a member of an elite group,” Conry said. “That was really special for me, and it kind of got in my blood, and it’s all I really wanted to do. I always wanted to be a part of the game, and it really helped me round out my passion for the game of lacrosse, and then direct it after my career was over, as somebody helping young men get to the same spot that I was.”
The height of Conry’s success as a lacrosse player was during his junior year, 2003, where he played 15 games as a defender while Johns Hopkins finished runners-up in that year’s NCAA Tournament. Though his role was relatively limited, as he did not start a single game, it was still portentous of the man Conry would become over the course of his career in the sport — someone who could arrive at programs with rich tapestries of legacy, and etch his own name into them.
The prestige of wearing the colors of the most decorated program in the sport fanned the flames of Conry’s love for lacrosse, bolstering his desire to build on the histories of the programs he spent his time at by writing his own story as a coach.
His first opportunity to do so came in 2004, when he joined the coaching staff at Siena College. A lone year with Penn State in 2007 followed his three-year tenure with the Saints — and after that, four more years as an assistant for Fairfield. At both programs, he developed a reputation for stingy defenses
“Learning experience,” Conry said of his time with Siena, the Nittany Lions and Fairfield. “I was able to grab from the coaches that I worked for, the people that I surrounded myself with, the administrators that kind of helped me direct, helped me reinvent myself consistently and continually evolve as a coach.”
And in 2013, Conry bore the fruits of his consistent evolution as a coach, retracing his steps back to Maryland — this time, as an assistant coach and defensive coordinator for the Terrapins. His previous time in the state with the Blue Jays had instilled him with a deep sense of respect for his forebears in the sport and the legacies they held. Now, inheriting another historic lacrosse program in Maryland — with 11 national titles in its trophy cabinet — he had a chance to serve as both a custodian of college lacrosse’s tradition, and a curator of its future.
Conry would have big shoes to fill with the Terrapins. His successor, Kevin Warne, had held the reins of Maryland’s defense in back-to-back runs to the NCAA title game in 2010 and 2011. Yet he wasted no time in sizing up to those shoes.
In Conry’s first season with the Terrapins, they had the stingiest defense in the ACC and ninth-best in the country in terms of points allowed. Five Maryland defenders earned All-American honors, with senior Jesse Bernhardt becoming the Terrapins’ first first-team selection in seven years. That defense improved to third-best in the nation in 2014 and first in 2015, as Maryland made back-to-back trips to the Final Four.
And in 2017, Conry’s final year with the program, Maryland made good on those statistical strengths and lofty accolades, winning its first national title since 1975. The defense Conry had built anchored the Terrapins as they allowed just 14 goals across the Final Four — just six of which came in the National Championship.
“We created this dialog where the history and tradition of Maryland defense was strong. But how can we go ahead and shape it to our personalities and our wants, needs and the type of players we’re playing?” Conry said. “There was a lot of dialogue, a lot of reinvention, a lot of building on the history of tradition, but more about, ‘Can we make this more of our own’?”
Conry had found a place for himself in Maryland’s vaunted line of successful players and coaches, as the architect of the dominant defense that had won the program’s first national championship in 42 years. By furthering a program tradition and shaping it in his own image, he was both paying back his respects to those who had built the program before his arrival, while also finding his own place in its history.
And now, after 13 years in assistant roles, Conry was ready for the next evolution of his coaching career — to shape the destiny of another program, this time as a head coach.
***
“When you look at the landscape of lacrosse and the profession of coaching, as your career progresses and you want to take over a program,” Conry said. “You want to make sure you’re doing it at a place that A, will attract top tier talent, and B, has the resources, the administration and the care and want to be successful at the national level.”
For Conry, the University of Michigan checked off the boxes to be that place. The Wolverines were a youthful program in 2018, having only just attained varsity status in 2011, but Michigan’s brand enabled Conry with the resources he needed to build a program capable of attaining results on a national stage. And despite the Wolverines’ relative dearth of lacrosse history, Conry was still inheriting a program that had made massive strides in recent years. John Paul, Conry’s predecessor as Michigan’s head coach, had transformed the program through dominance at the club level from 1999 to 2011. He then leveraged that success into a varsity program in 2012, laying a foundation for Conry to build on.
However, the lack of an NCAA Tournament bid throughout Paul’s tenure meant Conry was still inheriting a relatively blank canvas. He had all the resources at his disposal and a history of recent improvement to build on and pay respect to, while also having a chance to be the man who shepherded the Wolverines into national prominence.
Success at the national level was always Conry’s vision, given his admiration of the Michigan brand. At the time he took over, called the program a “sleeping giant.”
And in the seven years since his takeover, he’s started to realize his vision, the way he knows best — with respect.
Conry’s lacrosse career has been rooted in a deep respect for tradition. With the Blue Jays, the program’s storied history motivated him to seek out a career in lacrosse after his playing career; with the Terrapins, he drew on the program’s defensive tradition to construct his own national title-winning unit; and with the Wolverines, he sought to build on the work Paul had done with the program to take it further.
But perhaps even more importantly, his career has been guided by respect for the individuals he works with.
With Michigan, Conry has made a point of inviting his players to dinners at his house, and bringing his young children to meet his team at practices. While his players are on the stretch lines, he likes to walk through and talk with everyone, offering a dap-up or words of encouragement. And during the 2025 season, when the Wolverines dealt with a wave of injuries during practices, Conry intermittently paused practices and gave the team a few minutes to support their injured teammates.
“(The coaching staff) really treats us like their sons,” Lockwood said. “And we feel like they’re our second dad, in a way.”
The camaraderie Conry fostered surrounds everyone associated with Michigan men’s lacrosse, from the players to the rest of the coaching staff — Rogalski describes himself and Conry as being “like family.” And those bonds have been among the team’s strongest links in the past three years, as the program has soared to new heights.
In Conry’s first five years as head coach, the Wolverines remained near the bottom of the Big Ten. But 2023 marked a new dawn for Michigan. The Wolverines shook off a turbulent regular season and stormed through the Big Ten Tournament to capture their first-ever conference tournament crown, punching their debut NCAA Tournament ticket in the process. The “sleeping giant” was wide awake.
“It was the COVID year, where it was all Big Ten games, and I think we were 3-9,” Rogalski said. “And so those guys that were freshmen that year, these are the guys that were leading the program their junior and senior year.”
Michigan upset No. 6 Cornell before No. 1 Duke ended its postseason dreams, but the Wolverines replicated the feat a year later, defending their Big Ten Tournament crown before falling to No. 6 Denver in the first round. And even in an injury-wrought 2025 season, Michigan achieved the noteworthy feat of its first-ever victory over a No. 1 opponent — fittingly, against Maryland.
The culture of respect, for both the program the Wolverines represent and for each other, that Conry had fostered had bloomed into the squad that endured a turbulent 2021 season and went on to put Michigan atop the Big Ten. It was a group that exemplified the ethos that had guided Conry’s coaching career thus far, and gave him his proudest moment. As the Wolverines — and Conry — continue to climb the landscape of college lacrosse, it’ll be those same values guiding them forward.
Conry’s reverence for those who came before him, coupled with his program’s colors, have pushed him to consistently climb the ladder as a coach and fulfill his dream of writing his own chapter in his programs’ histories. The way he treats his players and support staff like family, respecting them as equals, has enabled him to create groups who can help him fulfill those dreams.
And in the process, he’s written his name in the history books of Johns Hopkins, the Terrapins and Michigan, but he’s also writing his own book — the story of someone who’d find a place in lacrosse history on his own, regardless of who came before him.
