From national champion to PLL star: Delco’s Andrew McMeekin excels beyond the faceoff

At halftime during this year’s NCAA men’s lacrosse national championship at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Va., the NCAA celebrated the 25th anniversary of Princeton’s national championship-winning team.

As the current Tigers went into the locker room, the 2001 team, which was the last time Princeton won a title, greeted them with cheers and words of encouragement to finish the game strong.

“It was pretty serendipitous,” said former Princeton faceoff specialist and Delco native Andrew McMeekin.

The Tigers defeated Notre Dame, 16-9, on May 25 to claim the program’s seventh national title. Less than two months later, the former Tiger is now making a name for himself in the Premier Lacrosse League with the Boston Cannons.

McMeekin ranks third in the league in faceoff percentage (56.8%) and scored his first professional goal on July 11 in a 15-13 win over the Denver Outlaws.

Playing professional lacrosse was always McMeekin’s goal.

He was coached by Chris Bates at Episcopal Academy. Bates was one of the original coaches during the PLL’s inaugural 2019 season. Once at Princeton, McMeekin watched the upperclassmen continue their careers professionally. Those personal ties with the league sparked a fire within him to reach the top of the sport.

» READ MORE: Delco’s Andrew McMeekin, one of the NCAA’s best in faceoffs, is Princeton’s ‘game-changing player’

When the 2026 PLL college draft arrived on April 14, McMeekin wasn’t surprised when his name wasn’t called. Specialty players, like goalies and faceoff men, are rarely selected on draft night.

Still, conversations with the Cannons coaches later that month reassured him that his professional opportunity would come.

Before beginning his professional career, McMeekin had one final goal to accomplish at Princeton: Win a national championship.

It was the culmination of a four-year journey to get there, McMeekin said.

“It really did feel like a full four-year build,” he added. “Each year had its own story and our class in general took away the right things that we needed to take away after the seasons ended. It came together at the right time.”

The group of 10 seniors, who all lived together in a house off campus, met once to twice a week outside of practice to discuss how to set the standard, what being a good teammate looked like, and how they could improve as a group.

“We learned to have honest and productive conversations early because we knew that it would benefit the team,” McMeekin said, “and since we, as a senior class, understood that, it trickled down from there.

“All the guys really cared about was winning as a team, and that’s different from what I’ve seen from a lot of other teams. All the best teams in the country have extremely talented players, obviously, but I think the teams that are willing to sacrifice egos a bit and more just want to win as opposed to one guy having all the best stats — that’s what our team thrived on the most this year.”

McMeekin left his impact on the Tigers lacrosse team. He’s the program’s career leader in faceoff wins (698) and ground balls (446), and he set the school’s single-season record this past season for ground balls (145). He also finished 23rd in the nation in faceoff percentage (57.7%).

Part of the success for McMeekin can be traced back to weekly four-hour round-trip drives to Cockeysville, Md.

Since seventh grade, McMeekin has trained with Jeremy Rualo, founder of Inner Circle Lacrosse. Inner Circle is built around a simple philosophy: players should be lacrosse players first and faceoff specialists second.

“I coach the position for the play, holistically,” Rualo said. “The play is to provide the ball in a possession to the offense. Two guys face off, yeah, but that isn’t decoupled from the midfield play that is about to happen.”

Rualo, who works professionally in clinical genomics and next-generation sequencing, said faceoffs were never intended to be separated from midfield play.

When he played lacrosse in high school and college, if a player took faceoffs, they were also expected to contribute as a midfielder. The specialization of the position developed later, eventually leading to the modern-day FOGO – “faceoff, get off.”

Now, Rualo and McMeekin believe many young players specialize too early without developing the broader skills to become complete lacrosse players.

“A lot of the time people look at face off as a very siloed and individual thing, but holistically it is a three-on-three with the wings and obviously very tied to possessions,” he said. “I take pride in making sure I have good plans for my wings and have a whole team view of the face off as opposed to just making it one-on-one the whole time.”

Inner Circle emphasizes the entire play that happens after the whistle. Players train in game-like scenarios, learning not only how to win faceoffs, but also how to anticipate where the ball will go, compete for ground balls, and contribute as a midfielder.

» READ MORE: Jace Banks picked up a stick late. Now he’s one of the nation’s top lacrosse players.

“Because of the way that we train, and the scale at which it is done and the holistic picture, what you get is the Inner Circlers are outstanding at midfield and that becomes this massive separator,” he said. “No one else really does it, because they don’t think that way.”

Developing complete lacrosse players is non-negotiable, Rualo added.

“‘Why do you want to suck at lacrosse?’” he jokingly asks his players. “You should absolutely be a lacrosse player first.”

McMeekin has carried this philosophy with him throughout high school and college. Now, he’s taking it to the next level.

“The coaches are very adamant about me trying to take shots, and pushing transition while still being smart with my risk tolerance,” he said. “I’ve had a long leash in that sense to try and score and push the offense, so we are going to continue with that.”