The looming voice of lacrosse

BALTIMORE — The familiar voice of a growing game approaches a restaurant cashier when the man behind him asks a question no doubt heard dozens of times before.

“You’re Quint, right?” the man prods before adding that his son plays lacrosse at Cornell.

Right he is.

On a larger scale, Quint Kessenich isn’t identifiable by a single name like a diva or a Brazilian soccer player. But in the tight-knit sport of lacrosse, he is instantly recognized and associated with the game for his work on virtually every level.

He calls many of the big college games, has covered Major League Lacrosse since its inception in 2001 and is an assistant coach at Baltimore high school power Boys’ Latin.

There’s also a burgeoning career in other sports, everything from providing play-by-play at the McDonald’s All-American game in March to sideline work on syndicated college football broadcasts to a reporting role at Triple Crown races.

He remains linked to lacrosse and is probably the sport’s most polarizing figure among fans. Few lack an opinion of him or mind sharing it either on a message board or in an e-mail to Kessenich himself.

He has called every NCAA final four since 1995 and is arguably the Billy Packer of lacrosse. But such a position carries with it an ambassadorial role, especially for a man whose career is so intertwined with the game’s surge in popularity in the last 15 years.

“Everyone in lacrosse has a rooting interest,” Kessenich says. “I don’t get any feedback from anybody that doesn’t have a reason to root for a team. There are very few neutral fans. It’s ‘My son plays for Cornell’ or ‘I played for Georgetown Prep.’ The lines of battle are clearly drawn. I try to bring this whole thing together like, ‘Hey, this sport is going places.’ ”

The slow rise

Didn’t see Kessenich’s evolution from a star goalie at Johns Hopkins (1987-90) to a utilityman for ESPN’s myriad networks coming? That’s OK. After all, sitting in human resources at Citibank in a self-described “Office Space job” isn’t a typical launching pad for a broadcasting career.

He still found and created opportunities. He was part of a three-man radio booth for Johns Hopkins games in 1991, then did a five-game package on the old regional cable outlet Home Team Sports the next two years.

“I was that miserable guy who every weekend would go do my lacrosse game and be happy,” Kessenich says. “Then when I started doing more and more lacrosse, I started thinking, ‘Man, it would be cool if I could do this all year long.’ ”

It took a while, although a one-game audition with ESPN for an indoor lacrosse game at the Boston Garden led to more regular work. In the interim, he augmented his broadcasting with a job writing and producing corporate videos.

Kessenich soon became a fixture at the college level, sometimes rankling an audience unaccustomed to either criticism or his blunt approach.

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