Jarrod Neumann thinks a lot about the ones who didn’t have a chance.

The ones who didn’t have a basketball coach to pick them up and drop them off at practice when they were little. Who didn’t have a lacrosse coach reach out with a chance to play, along with free equipment. Who didn’t have someone see their potential and give them a chance at college. Who didn’t have someone understand that not everything’s perfect at home, that there will be practices missed and family issues and tragedies.

“I think about it all the time,” says Neumann. “I think about kids I grew up with. ‘He was such a good athlete, imagine him on the lacrosse field.’

“Imagine all the kids who quit sports or who never had the opportunity, because, one, it’s expensive. Two, the schools didn’t have it or the opportunity didn’t present itself. There are a ton of kids missing out.”

Neumann grew up without much, watching his mother struggle and work hard to get by to support him and their family. He was a star basketball player in his youth and in high school, but he had never seen a lacrosse game —let alone played one— until spring of his senior year at Northampton (Mass.).

Now, playing in the Premier Lacrosse League, Neumann is one of the best defensemen in the world. He’s a superb athlete and an Epoch pro who has become a star thanks in part to his big shot — the PLL’s fastest— and 2-point shooting prowess as a member of the Chaos’ “Bomb Squad.” He says he wants to be the model for “a new generation of close defensemen” — a generation for which he hopes more players like him have the support and advocates he did.

“People always ask me, ‘that’s the Providence kid?’ and they don’t know anything about him. That’s the unfortunate part of our sport,” says John Galloway, who coached him while on the staff for the Friars. “But he’s a guy with a platform. He could be one of the biggest stars in our sport.”

* * *

On Matt Striebel’s first day coaching at Northampton high school, Neumann came up to him in the parking lot. He was looking for something to do the last semester of his senior year, and he had some buddies who played lacrosse, so he was considering it. Neumann was striking — at 6-foot-3, he had the look of an elite athlete.

A standout basketball player, Neumann had potential to play college ball — DI, or high-level DII or DIII. Striebel was looking to instill a new culture for the lacrosse team, and basketball coach Rey Harp insisted Neumann would be a fit.

“I was watching him attack the conditioning drills we were doing, and from that minute I started reaching out to college coaches I knew,” Striebel says. “It was just a matter of time before he figured out how to play lacrosse.”

“I knew I couldn’t catch or throw, so the practice part — I was not looking forward to it. They’ll make fun of the new kid who can’t throw. So I won the push-ups, I won the sit-ups , the mile. I won the shuffles. I won everything I could win, if there was anything I could win. When practice came, I knew I wasn’t going to be the best,” Neumann says.

Striebel was able to get Neumann his first set of gear to play on the team— something he couldn’t afford on his own. He was one piece of a support system of coaches who helped Neumann develop his lacrosse game.

“Playing basketball, you need a pair of shoes, and there’s always a ball around. Playing lacrosse, you need a helmet which is hundreds of dollars, you need a stick which is hundreds of dollars you need someone to string it, you need pads and cleats. You need a lot of things in order to play a sport that’s so fun,” Neumann says.

“For someone to go out of their way to make sure I got stuff that not only fit me, but what was mine — I didn’t have to give it back. That meant a lot from a kid who didn’t come from very much. To go out and reach out to college coaches. Make sure I could do this or that. Or have an opportunity to even go to a prospect clinic. I didn’t even know what these were. He was reaching out making sure he could find dates, what days I could go, how to get there, transportation. That level of kindness was unmatched.”

Neumann was raised by his mother, Shelly, and lived with several kids who stayed in the house. “I have a lot of brothers and sisters in my mind, based off how I grew up,” he says.

“As you get older, you go to school, you start to educate and you know how much money you have and how well your parents do. My mom never made us feel like we were poor. But at the same time, we would see her struggle with a lot of things to give us what we needed. She did everything she could to give us everything we needed. That came with an extreme amount of work, hours and sacrifice,” he says.

She made sure athletics were central to his life, and he played nearly everything he could. “I played eight days a week worth of sports in seven days,” he jokes.

He played youth basketball and AAU, where coach Lester Ayala would drive him and pick him up from practices. Harp, too, when he got to high school, would make sure he was taken care of.

Basketball was his first love, but when he joined the lacrosse team, it was fresh and exciting. It wasn’t work.

“I had played basketball at such a high level for so long, it was almost like a business, the way the AAU basketball was run. Kids work so hard and try so long to make these elite-level teams, and I was just watching kids get picked up and dropped like flies,” he says.

Striebel arranged for college coaches to come watch this promising-but-raw talent. UMass was the first staff to see him and take a pass. In the MLL offseason, Striebel would shoot on Galloway, then an assistant at Providence, and talked up Neumann.

They arranged for him to go to a Providence prospect day. Held at the program’s old AstroTurf field, Neumann came into passing drills and absolutely could not pass or catch. But then as the day went on, Galloway and Providence coach Chris Gabrielli saw all of the same things Striebel did.

“We were doing a one-on-one without sticks, and people could not run by him,” says Galloway. “We realized this kid was above and beyond what we expected athletically.”

The prospect day ended at 4 p.m. At 4:01 p.m., Striebel received a text message from Galloway: “If we don’t screw this guy up, he’s going to be an All-American.”

Providence wanted him, but that wouldn’t be easy. He needed a full ride, and it was the era of early recruiting in which money was tied up for years. Striebel was able to get him into Bridgton Academy (Me.), so he could continue to develop and they could figure out a way to pay for college.

“I couldn’t go on a partial or a half. I didn’t have that capital in the background of my family to pay the rest. I didn’t want to leave school with hundreds of thousands in debt,” he says. He interviewed for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. scholarship, was awarded it and enrolled at Providence in fall 2013.

* * *

Neumann’s freshman year at Providence, Gabrielli had the players do an assignment: “Why do you love lacrosse?”

Neumann’s response: “I don’t love it. I like it. I have fun playing it. I don’t love it like I love basketball. I love my teammates. I love Providence, I love everything about this, but I don’t love lacrosse yet.”

“I was comparing it to basketball still.”

There was an adjustment period. The other members of his class had all been in group chats for more than a year, they’d played against and with each other in summer club tournaments and high school. Neumann was still the project who could barely catch.

Gabrielli and Galloway were tremendous resources, though. There were family issues back home that caused him to miss practice — or have someone arrange a ride or help him with the train schedule to go home.

Once, before a game against Villanova, Neumann found out that a family member had been shot. He broke down with Galloway a bit before the game, but then it was game time and it was all business.

“That was always the MO. Whether it was a bill that had to be paid that him and his mom couldn’t come up with it, or his mom was moving back in with his grandma, or if it was someone being shot, there was always something going on. For him to keep his focus on academics, he didn’t get the notoriety he deserved until the end of his career,” Galloway says.

Along the way, he became a better lacrosse player. His sophomore year he began shooting more in practice, and Galloway says he was “obsessed” with individual work. The player who was always a force on the defensive end, could now pick it up, could now run down field and move the ball.

His sophomore year on he was first-team All-Big East, and his senior year was an Inside Lacrosse third-team Media All-American and the Big East’s Defensive Player of the Year.

The end of his junior year he went up to Gabrielli: “I love this sport now. It’s the greatest sport ever made. This is my sport. This is what I was meant to play.”

* * *

Neumann is working in commercial real estate, specializing in the hotel industry after receiving a finance degree and a Master’s from Providence. Through college, he used his newfound lacrosse talent to land elite internships.

“Every internship I had I leveraged my lacrosse network to get my foot in the door. Most kids I interned with, their mom and dad was a partner somewhere. Their dad belonged to the same country club of the CEO. There was some connection that got them in the door. Mine, I leveraged lacrosse because I didn’t have those personal connections,” he says.

On the field — still fresh to the sport — he’s improving as a pro. He was drafted by Major League Lacrosse’s Florida Launch and played his rookie year and second season. He wanted a chance at a pro sponsorship, and at the urging of Dylan Molloy, he approached Epoch about being the first defenseman to become an Epoch sponsored athlete.

“I didn’t get that same feel from a lot of other companies I talked to. I didn’t get the sense they cared about the athlete. They cared about the brand more,” he said. “At Epoch, they cared about me. They said, ‘if you succeed, we succeed.’”

Neumann’s notoriety has shot through the roof in the inaugural PLL season. Playing for the Chaos, his 2-point shooting, along with that of his teammates Jake Froccaro and Matt Rees, has earned the group the moniker “Bomb Squad.” Through eight weeks, with the Chaos at first in the league and a playoff spot clinched, he shot 5 of 12 from behind the 2-point arc, in addition to picking up 15 groundballs and five caused turnovers.

At the PLL All-Star Game, he fired home the fastest shot using a prototype Epoch shaft and head — at his request for a stiffer option — hitting 115 miles per hour.

It’s a highlight, but it’s not necessarily what Neumann wants to be known for. What he appreciates more is the Instagram messages he gets from kids who are in high school and are just picking up the stick and discovering the sport the way he did. He’s the defenseman for that generation of players.

“I’m different in a lot of aspects than a lot of the lacrosse world. I don’t think I’ve proved everything I have to prove yet. This is the first time I’m an all-star. Now I’m getting recognized for my 2-pointers, which I appreciate. But at the same time I should get recognized for the defense. I’m marking the best guys on every team. I’m playing them well; I’m outscoring them in some places. It’s about taking the next step,” he says. “I’m no lacrosse history buff. I don’t know a lot of the players guys talk about, just because I wasn’t focusing on the sport from a young age. I get these messages a lot that I’m a different breed, a new generation of close defenseman.”