Team NorCal Lacrosse

Matt Skiba played Lacrosse at Santa Clara University for 3 seasons. A closed defender and long stick midfielder, Matt served as Co-Captain and President of the team in his Junior and Senior seasons. Since graduating from Santa Clara in 2007 Matt has been active in the Bay Area lacrosse community and has an extensive youth and high school coaching resume.

In 2007 Matt began coaching at Stuart Hall for Boys in San Francisco, and helped lead the smallest club in the Northn California Junior Lacrosse Association to 4 straight playoff appearences.

This past summer Matt left Stuart Hall to become the new Executive Director of the Tomahawks Lacrosse Club. In addition to being named as the new head of the Tomahawks, Matt was also nameed as the Head Junior Varsity Coach and Assistant Varsity Coach at Bellarmine College Preparatory.

Matt began coaching with Team NorCal in the summer of 2010, and finished the year with an 11 and 7 record. In 2011, Matt took on an even larger position with Team NorCal when he was named as Program Director of the Youth Division of the organization. That same summer, Matt helped coach the Team NorCal 2011 U15 Blues to the US Lacrosse National Championship where they finished 12th in the country. In addition to a Championship tournament run, Matt also coached the U11 Bears, U13 Blues and the U17 Blues in 6 other tournaments comprising a total record that summer of 21 and 10.

A native of the east coast, Matt graduate from Santa Clara University in 2007 with a Bachelors Degree in American History. Upon graduatiing Matt moved to San Francisco and currently lives there today.

Jeff Eckenhoff grew up playing lacrosse in the Bay Area.  He earned All-American recognition in 2003 when he played for the Palo Alto Tomahawks.  He played at the collegiate level for four years at the University of Colorado at Boulder, starting for three of them.  After graduating, he played lacrosse for the ETP Redwings in Adelaide, South Australia, helping them make the playoffs in 2008 for the first time in 14 years.  As a coach, Jeff co-coached the Palo Alto Tomahawk Boys Varsity program to reach 3rd place in the Northern California Club Championship Tournament in 2009.  Jeff has also coached the boys Nor-Cal program for the last three years taking teams to tournaments in New York, Ohio, and Texas.  Currently, Jeff is coaching the JV Boys Lacrosse program at Menlo School.

Brick has been coaching at Palo Alto High School since 2010, where he is currently an assistant with the JV program.  2011 is his first year coaching with Team NorCal.  Brick grew up outside Syracuse, New York and has been playing lacrosse since 6th grade.  He started playing defense and long-stick midfielder in 8th grade and played year round throughout high school.  In college, he attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he continued playing lacrosse with the school's club team and in summer leagues back home.  After college, Brick moved to the bay area for work and joined the Palo Alto Ducks, a men's club lacrosse team, where he continues to play after 5 years. Brick currently lives in Sunnyvale and works as a medical device engineer for the start-up company PneumRx in Mountain View.

 

Steven Harman started playing lacrosse at 8 years old as a student at Norfolk Academy in Norfolk, Virginia.  When his family moved to Roanoke he played his junior and senior High School years on the Vinton Lacrosse Club, where he was a team captain, helped win the Roanoke Valley Championship, and was named to the All-League First Team Defense.  Steven played on Team West in the Virginia Commonwealth Games before attending the University of Virginia, where he played on the club team and graduated in 1996.

The next year Steven coached the U11 Blue Team to the Roanoke Valley Rats League Championship and continued to coach and play lacrosse in Roanoke, where he worked at PaineWebber before moving in 2000 to California to work in Menlo Park.  Steven has been playing men’s lacrosse with the Palo Alto Lacrosse Club since 2001, and has been an assistant coach at Menlo School.  In 2004 he began coaching at Menlo-Atherton High School where he is currently the JV Head Coach.

Steven also coached youth classes with Atherton Lacrosse, High School with Vitality Lacrosse, and in 2010 he helped coach a High School Travel Team which brought home the U19 Lake Tahoe Tournament Championship.

Steven works at UBS Financial Services in Palo Alto and lives in Emerald Hills.

Gary Podesta has a long and storied career in the sport of lacrosse.  He began his lacrosse career on Long Island, New York where he started coaching in 1979 at Bethpage High School, producing three players who would become college All-Americans. After moving to California, Gary began to coach at the college level. From 1983-1995, 2000-2009 and again from 2011 to present, he is the head coach at Santa Clara University.  In 1993 he was selected as Western Collegiate Lacrosse League Division 1 Coach of the Year.  He is the President of the WCLL and serves on the Board of the Northern California Chapter of US Lacrosse.  He also served as the Director of Game Operations for the San Francisco Dragons of Major League Lacrosse.  In 2003, Podesta was inducted into the Santa Clara University Athletic Hall of Fame.  In 2010 Gary was inducted into the US Lacrosse Northern California Chapter Hall of Fame.