Growing up in a military family, Don Bosco's Brady Scioletti played by some different rules than his lacrosse teammates.
No cell phone until seventh grade. No social media until eighth. No cutting corners on the way to the top.
At 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds, the Duke commit has become one of the top 10 recruits in the country with physical tools you can't teach. What fans might not notice is how a disciplined mindset allowed him to harness those tools to the best of his ability.
That mindset surrounds him every day while living on base at West Point, about 40 minutes north of his high school campus.
"It definitely impacted how I grew up," Scioletti said. "I didn't go out at all freshman or sophomore year. I was at home either working out or playing lacrosse. I just took the things in life I wanted more seriously. Using discipline my parents taught me got me to where I am."
Where Scioletti finds himself now is prime real estate. Already the all-time leader at Don Bosco with 135 goals, the senior southpaw is the centerpiece for the No. 1 team in North Jersey after leading the Ironmen to a state title last spring.
But for Brady – known as "Bubba" to his coaches and teammates – the spotlight hasn't tarnished his stoic demeanor or production level.
Scioletti has scored a hat trick in five of the first seven games this year, including one on his 18th birthday last Tuesday against rival Bergen Catholic. If Scioletti keeps up the current pace, he's less than a month away from breaking the school points record held by former teammate Koleton Marquis (221).
"He is a lacrosse junkie that takes his craft very seriously," coach Matt Lane said. "He always stays to shoot later than others and continuously evolves his game season after season."
Scioletti was seemingly tailor-made to reach the college level with two parents, an uncle and a grandfather who all played in Division I.
His mom played soccer at West Point and went on to serve for 10 years. His father, Colonel Michael Scioletti, was a Chicago White Sox draft pick who slugged his way to 11 Army records before returning to campus to run the math department.
Their competitive mentality rubbed off on Brady, who was born in California and moved from the Denver suburbs to New York after third grade. Scioletti remembers the old house rule was if he wanted to play some video games, he had to shoot a bucket of balls or play basketball for an hour.
Basketball was actually his No. 1 sport up until COVID hit.
"My dad keeps telling me to this day that my best performance was in sixth grade when I dropped 20-something on a top team from New York City," Scioletti said.
As time went on, Scioletti's priorities started to change. While he was a high-scoring guard on Don Bosco's freshman basketball team, a growth spurt the following year made him varsity-ready in lacrosse.
Around that time, Scioletti started working twice a week with strength coach and current Don Bosco assistant Rich Robinson. Robinson can still picture one day at Lax ...
