Jarrod Neumann is a five-time All-Star in the Premier Lacrosse League. He’s a Defensive Player of the Year winner and a PLL champion. He owns the fastest shot in lacrosse history, at 121 miles per hour.

And he was introduced to the sport as a high school senior in the Northampton High School parking lot.

A basketball star who led the Blue Devils to the 2011 Division I Western Mass. title, Neumann switched sports during his senior spring, and a dozen years later, he’s one of the most decorated defenders in lacrosse history. On Saturday, he played in his fifth PLL All-Star game, and on Friday at 8:30 p.m., his Carolina Chaos team play the Maryland Whipsnakes in Fairfield, Conn., the closest Neumann will get to Hampshire County in the league’s summer-long cross-country tour.

Though the 6-foot-4, 230-pound Neumann has added considerable strength to his tall-and-slender build from high school, there are still some hints of his Northampton basketball past.

“I’m not a big fancy-this, fancy-that person,” Neumann. “I inflict pain and use physical dominance to win my matchups, which is the same thing I used to do in basketball, minus the pain and the hitting part.”

Northampton boys basketball head coach Rey Harp puts Neumann in his “upper echelon” of players he’s coached across his 20 years with the Blue Devils. In Neumann’s senior year, he played point forward, initiated the offense, served as the Blue Devils’ primary scoring option and guarded the opponent’s best player, no matter the position. He was good enough to play overseas, Harp said.

Though he had basketball scholarship offers, Harp and Neumann were still looking for more by the time Neumann’s senior spring season rolled around. Neumann wanted to take a break from AAU basketball and play a sport with his friends. He initially considered track and spoke with former track coach Kathleen Ralls about running the hurdles and the high jump.

But some of his best friends convinced him to come out for lacrosse, and USA Lacrosse Hall of Famer Matt Striebel was entering his first season as Northampton’s head coach. Neumann approached Striebel in the parking lot and told him he’d like to join the team.

He had no stick skills whatsoever, but was eager to compete at practice.

“I won everything else I could win,” Neumann said. “Which was conditioning or line work or drill work or after-practice work or Miracle Monday miles.”

Striebel handed him a long pole and put him on defense. In Northampton’s second game of the season, he held West Springfield attack and Springfield College commit Brendan Boss to just two points, his second-worst showing of a season in which he scored 102 points.

“His gift as a defenseman was his feet – he could stay in front of just about anybody,” Striebel said. “He didn’t know how to play physically yet, he was literally just shuffling his feet and playing basketball defense.”

Neumann’s ability to defend the opponent’s best player transitioned “naturally” from basketball to lacrosse, Harp said. In basketball, he defended with his feet. In lacrosse, he defended with his feet and fists.

“He never played lacrosse before his senior year of high school,” Harp said. “But he had been playing lacrosse as a high-level-thinking basketball player for a long time.”

Striebel started contacting every college coach he knew to alert them to Neumann, who eventually took a post-graduate year at Bridgton Academy in Maine before landing at Providence College.

“It was so obvious,” Striebel said. “…within a practice I was like ‘wow, this kid brings some athletic attributes to the table that are unique.’ Within a game it was like ‘this kid can play college lacrosse, now it’s just a question of figuring out where.’”

After earning two All-America honors at Providence, Neumann was drafted by the Florida Launch of Major League Lacrosse. He played for the Launch for two seasons before a move to the PLL’s Chaos, where he’s spent the past six seasons.

In his inaugural campaign with the Chaos, Neumann was named the Defensive Player of the Year and earned his first All-Star nod. He hasn’t missed an All-Star game since, and has won four titles in the PLL’s All-Star weekend fastest shot competition, including the last three. 

1️⃣2️⃣1️⃣ MPH FROM JARROD NEUMANN‼️ 🔥🔥🔥

Fastest shot in history.
@PremierLacrossepic.twitter.com/aZc4W9M5pk

— ESPN (@espn) July 23, 2023

Neumann helped power the Chaos to a PLL Championship in 2021 and was one of three 2024 All-Stars on a Chaos defense that leads the league with 11.2 goals allowed per game.

Against 2024 No. 1 overall pick Brennan O’Neill on June 2, Neumann held the Tewaaraton winner (college lacrosse’s Heisman) to just one goal. He scored eight in his next game.

On June 8, Neumann held four-time All-Star Jeff Teat, who leads the league in goals and points, to one goal.

And on June 15, he held Connor Fields to one goal. He’s scored a hat-trick in every other game this season.

“I haven’t had any crazy goals, I haven’t had any crazy takeaway checks, but I’ve been playing arguably the best defensive lacrosse I’ve ever played,” Neumann said.

Neumann, 30, who also works in real estate, credits his longevity to his offseason training program. On a typical offseason weekend, he wakes up before 6 a.m. and is at the gym by 7. After a two-hour strength workout, he heads back to his home in Los Angeles to recover before more training in the evening. He works on speed, agility, lateral movements and explosion for an hour before spending the next few hours training others in private training sessions or clinics.

When Neumann was first drafted into pro lacrosse eight years ago, the MLL and PLL were dueling leagues in a sport that had struggled to find a consistent professional home for its best players. In 2020, the two leagues merged, and last year, each of the eight clubs received city affiliations after years of touring. Though the league still operates with a touring schedule, the change from Chaos Lacrosse Club to Carolina Chaos was a welcome one for Neumann.

“It connects those dots that were kind of missing before,” Neumann said “…I really enjoy that aspect of it, being able to have that fan engagement in a certain region is great and playing in your home city is amazing.”

Neumann now lives 3,000 miles away from his Northampton home, but he sees Striebel once a year and he’s held youth clinics in western Mass. during visits back home in previous years. He’s hoping to come back to Northampton this year for the holidays, and the basketball team is looking into honoring him at a future game.

Eight years into life as a professional lacrosse player and a dozen removed from first picking up a stick in the high school parking lot, Striebel says he saw this coming all the way.

“I’m not surprised,” Striebel said. “He had that oozing off him the minute he walked on to the lacrosse field at Northampton High School.”