Being a professional athlete and in law school simultaneously may seem like an overwhelming feat, but Bryce Wasserman, attackman on the Boston Cannons, wouldn’t have it any other way.
A native of Southlake Texas, Wasserman went to Monmouth University, where he was originally a finance major. But after several finance classes and some internships, he realized he wanted something different.
“It (finance) wasn’t really something that I could see myself waking up and wanting to do every day,” Wasserman said.
Wasserman found his true calling when he took a class with the professor who ran the pre-law concentration.
He liked it a lot because it felt like a lacrosse game.
“At trial, and in these different settings of litigations, you put your hard work to the test against someone else, which is something that I really gravitated to,” Wasserman said. “It (the class) gave me the same rush as playing a game does, and so I think that aspect is what made me really fall in love with it.”
Wasserman took the LSAT’s his junior year and was accepted into the University of Miami, but was also accepted into a fifth-year master’s MBA program at Monmouth, which prompted a difficult decision.
After some thought, Wasserman decided to defer Law School for a year, allowing him to pursue an advanced degree in a familiar setting and remaining with the lacrosse team as a graduate assistant.
“It helped me out as a player because I was finally able to take a step back from the game and look at the X’s and O’s,” Wasserman said.
After finishing his MBA at Monmouth, he set on the next journey towards his JD. He chose Miami because of their strength in Sports and Entertainment Law.
Wasserman knows that his professional lacrosse career will separate him from the pack after he graduates. While he is not a lawyer yet, he’s taking every contract that comes his way as a learning opportunity.
“I think being at the professional level really helped set me apart because I handle my own contracts,” Wasserman said. “I look at all those things, and marketing agreements and sponsorship deals with other companies. I’ve seen it all first hand.”
Wasserman started law school on August 12, 2019 and described it as a “whirlwind” as he was still playing for the Dallas Rattlers at the time.
“We played Atlanta, after the game I went straight to Miami. I’m literally buying textbooks as my couch is getting moved in,” Wasserman said. “Literally balancing all of that. Wake up, go to orientation, leave orientation early to come back to Dallas to play another game. I think I landed at 7 p.m the night before the first day of law school.”
The first six weeks were hectic for him since they both overlapped, but when he looks back on it, he thinks it was a lot of fun.
Wasserman would finish his morning class on Friday, and his friend would take him straight to the airport to go to wherever he was playing that week.
“My friends at school made fun of me and would call me Hannah Montana,” Wasserman said with a laugh.
Despite it being a lot of fun, Wasserman said it was different because he went from living with his friends at Monmouth to being in Miami by himself, while still figuring everything out.
“Law school is definitely mentally taxing. Mostly because you only get one grade,” Wasserman said. “There are no tests, no quizzes. It’s just your final, and the final is 100% essay and it’s usually only one question.”
So how does the MLL All-Star balance both school and lacrosse? Checklists.
“I’m a huge fan of checklists,” Wasserman said. “I’ll rip out two pieces of paper. One is my school to-do list, and one is my lacrosse to-do list.
Wasserman would go to school from 9:00 a.m to 5:00 pm, come home, eat dinner, do his readings, and around 7 or 8 p.m is when he found time to focus on lacrosse.
Tuesday was the main day, where he would go in his stairwell and play wall ball against a brick wall.
“Especially being down in Miami, it’s not like Baltimore, where you drive around and there’s a lacrosse goal on every corner,” Wasserman said. “It was slim pickings down there.”
In February, he was able to get hooked up with his trainer Anthony, who would help him prepare for the upcoming season.
“It’s good to have that connection now because I was so done with my apartment gym,” Wasserman said.
He’s hoping all that work with Anthony, using the few goals he could find in Miami and the hours of wall-ball will come in handy with this grueling 2020 schedule. He has a new team to mesh with, a new coach to impress but has the help of a new sponsor in Powell Lacrosse.
Wasserman’s MLL journey thus far has seen…being waived by the Outlaws, bouncing from Ohio to Dallas and now playing for Boston’s lethal attack line. He has not yet had the opportunity to hoist the Steinfeld Trophy, but he’s hoping that 10 days of dedicated team bonding and onfield play, might make this his year.
“I literally go straight from law school to the airport to our shootaround and then play the game,” Wasserman said. “But now, we’re going to be full-time in a hotel room, ready to go in Annapolis. So I’m very excited about it. I think it’s going to be awesome.”
Bryce Wasserman Twitter: @BryceWasserman
Bryce Wasserman Instagram: @brycewasserman2
Boston Cannons Twitter: @BostonCannons
Boston Cannons Instagram: @LaxCannons
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