Aggie attackman destroys defenses
Two years after suffering a neck injury that ended his football career, Aggie attackman Kyle Fiat is the Utah State lacrosse team’s leading scorer and has helped the club to a 5-2 start this season.
In September 2001, Fiat was in St. George wearing a Dixie State football jersey when he was hit from behind during practice, causing him to land awkwardly on his head.
He played for five more weeks and four more games before his mother mandated a visit to a physician, which produced X-rays revealing Fiat had cracked a vertebrae and compressed the disc around it.
“The doctor came out and basically told me I had played my last play,” Fiat said. “The first question I asked him was if I could play lacrosse.”
Nearly three years later Fiat, the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse Conference’s leader in points per game (5.8), is wearing an Aggie lacrosse jersey and said his neck is back to full strength. Opposing defenses would probably agree.
In his second season at Utah State, Fiat’s team-leading 19 goals are good enough for ninth-best in the league. Fiat and the Aggies, however, have only played seven games this spring – about half as many as the other teams in the league.
“In a game where most of the players are dominantly right-handed,” Fiat said, “I think just having a little bit of quickness and being a natural lefty gives me an advantage.”
Fiat also holds a team-high 16 assists, a statistic for which he entirely credits the performances of his teammates.
“I think our team’s working together a lot better,” Fiat said. “People are getting open for some real easy shots. I work a lot harder for the goals I get than for the assists.”
With his football career over, he said he made an easy decision to transfer to Utah State to play lacrosse – a decision Aggie defenseman Nate Daniels said he was glad for.
“There’s not much negative you can say about Kyle,” Daniels said. “He’s one of the best attackmen in the country. He plays 100 percent every game and he knows that if he doesn’t play well, this team doesn’t have a very good chance of winning.”
But after his transfer from Dixie, Fiat said a new team and a new school were not the only things he found in Logan.
“I came up to Utah State as a [midfielder],” Fiat said. “But right when I got up here I got sent right to attack, and I didn’t know anything about playing attack.”
Fiat credits Aggie Head Coach Eddie Vega for instructing him and adjusting him to the new position.
“Just coaching me on positions and where I should be and when I should be there has really helped my game a lot,” Fiat said.
Fiat began playing lacrosse during his junior year of high school as a way of conditioning for football during the spring. By his senior year, he was named to the Utah High School Lacrosse All-star Team in addition to receiving first-team all-region honors in football.
“I think lacrosse is a great sport in the spring,” Fiat said. “And one thing that really appealed to me as a football player was the contact.”
Even after his injury, Fiat said he doesn’t allow fear to play a factor in how physical he plays the game.
“Playing smart helps,” Fiat said. “I always want to play as physical as I can, and as long as I play smart and with the right techniques, it’s not something that really worries me.”
Since becoming involved with lacrosse, a popular East Coast sport, Fiat said he has seen enormous amounts of growth in the game’s popularity in Utah.
“It’s getting really big in Utah and even in Cache Valley,” Fiat said. “We’re getting a lot of kids from local high schools coming and playing for us. People who have never seen the game before are seeing it as a really entertaining sport to watch and more and more kids are seeing it as a sport they want to play.”
In keeping up with the sport’s growth, Fiat said Vega has been instrumental in developing the program at the university level.
“[Vega’s] done an incredible job with turning this club into a serious athletic program,” Fiat said. “We’re paying a lot more in dues just to be able to take buses on our road trips, have team warm-ups and gloves – just to do the little things you want your college team to do.”
The Ags have also upped the ante as far as competition is concerned, Fiat said, moving up to the RMLC’s A Division this season and facing off with a higher caliber of opponent.
“Last year the big games were against Fort Lewis, Western and UVSC,” Fiat said. “This year we play BYU and Colorado State – the top teams in the nation in the [United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association]. The difference between the level of competition in the two leagues is pretty dramatic.”
This weekend, Fiat and the Aggies will look to bolster their record against Montana State Friday at 5 p.m. and UVSC Saturday at 12 p.m. on the Tower field.
-acf@cc.usu.edu