The day was April 25, 2003, and Steve Vallone soared in the air and whipped a shot to the net.

The Syracuse men’s lacrosse team faced Massachusetts in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament. And Vallone, SU’s third-leading scorer, fired the shot without regard for his health, just hoping to tack a tally on the board and secure a playoff spot.

Sure, he saw the inevitable collision with Justin Walker, the oncoming UMass defender. But he was used to those plays, used to accepting the brunt of the hard hits. At 6 feet 2 inches, 211 pounds, Vallone regularly dished out poundings rather than absorb them.

The hit didn’t shake Vallone this time, either. The stick did. As Vallone fell, Walker’s stick jammed up Vallone’s mask, breaking his jaw.

When Vallone went down, blood streamed from his mouth. He bit down, and his teeth felt shattered.

‘It felt horrible,’ Vallone said, ‘like someone shot me in the face. I was in so much pain that I was going into shock. My face was going numb. I didn’t know what was going on. It was scary.’

Six weeks of rehabilitation cost Vallone a chance to compete in the Final Four. Now, with the start of 2004, Vallone gets a chance to assert himself as the scorer SU sorely needs with the departure of Michael Springer. Tomorrow, Vallone and Syracuse face Maryland at noon in its second and final scrimmage of the spring.

‘Definitely losing him last year hurt us a lot,’ midfielder Sean Lindsay said. ‘Me and him complement each other in the midfield. If they focus on me, it frees him up. If they focus on him, it frees me up. We sort of scratch each other’s back.’

With Vallone out, the duo broke up, too. The injury restricted Vallone in the most basic everyday tasks. Eating, drinking, talking, anything.

That’s because doctors applied a maze of metal to Vallone’s teeth, connecting each tooth to another, wiring his jaw shut.

‘I couldn’t exercise for six weeks,’ Vallone said. ‘I couldn’t get any nutrients. My body was in horrible condition. I was a little weakling.

‘Whatever I had to eat had to go through the cracks of my teeth. I guess if you had a perfect bite, they’d have to knock out a tooth. Thank goodness I never had braces and had plenty of holes.’

The wires restricted Vallone’s eating habits, limiting the senior to soup and milkshakes. With the decreased variability, Vallone lost 25 pounds.

‘I’m the kind of guy who can’t bite into ice cream,’ Vallone said, ‘so it sucked.’

The timing hardly helped. Vallone traveled with Syracuse during its wins over Dartmouth and Princeton – 13-11 and 15-5, respectively – and needed to take his final exams at home because of the pain.

Finally, after six weeks, what Vallone describes as ‘hell’ ended. The doctors removed the wires and told him to open his mouth.

‘It was like this,’ Vallone says, barely moving his lips apart. ‘Every time I tried opening my mouth, it didn’t work because my jaw muscles were just deteriorated. I went to Wendy’s and tried it out. Got some fries and a burger. And it took me like a half hour just to eat that.’

Said SU coach John Desko: ‘There’s a learning process again because there’s a little bit of atrophy in the jaw bones. The first thing you want to do is eat a big, juicy steak when you get your wires off, and it doesn’t work because you’ve got to build up to it.’

Vallone played in a summer league game a few weeks later. Doctors told him the jaw bones were just as strong as before and risked no harm playing. Vallone, at first somewhat complacent, understands now how rare the injury is and says he hardly thinks about it now.

Saturday, when Syracuse beat Navy, 12-8, Vallone tallied one assist. With the need for increased scoring, Vallone will hardly play hesitantly.

‘He’s still putting his chin where it doesn’t belong,’ Desko said. ‘He’s physical. He hits people. So I don’t think it’s affected him at all. He’s doing great.’

Published on February 19, 2004 at 12:00 pm