Tucker Dordevic could defy gravity growing up. His family called him Tucker Danger. His superpower?
ADHD.
Dordevic, the Syracuse lacrosse star who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, bounced off the walls as a child. Literally. There’s a photo of him scaling a wood-paneled wall of his Portland, Oregon, home while playing ping pong. It looks like something out of a junior parkour promo.
“I went to school with kids with learning differences, of all different spectrums,” said Dordevic, who attended Edison High School. Named after famous inventor Thomas Edison, who was dyslexic, the school shares a campus and extracurricular activities with Jesuit High School. “It’s easy for younger kids going through puberty to be embarrassed to have learning differences. I take pride in it. I’m happy I have them. I don’t think I’d be the person today if I didn’t have them.”
“It’s easy to be embarrassed to have learning differences. I take pride in it.”
Dordevic struggled through elementary school. He fell behind in reading, could not memorize math and hurriedly completed multiple-choice exams with random selections of answers just so he could hand in the Scantron at the same time as everyone else. He took Adderall, a drug used to treat ADHD, and it made him feel like a zombie.
Everything changed at Edison, where there’s one teacher for every nine students, oral exam options, kinetic activity and music in classes and a customized approach to learning. Dordevic thrived there and starred for Jesuit’s lacrosse team, earning 2017 OHSLA Player of the Year honors.
One thing has not changed, however.
He’s still defying gravity. He’s still very dangerous.
A two-time All-American midfielder, Dordevic scored a goal Saturday that would make Gary Gait blush. You’ve likely seen it by now. It has more than 890,000 views from various accounts on Instagram and Twitter — including a cinematic 4K slow-motion edit from Syracuse — and landed the No. 1 spot on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” for the top play of the day.
As Syracuse Post-Standard writer Donna Ditota depicted it:
“It started when long stick midfielder Landon Clary delivered a hit that dislodged the ball from a Duke stick and then charged upfield with the ball.
“Syracuse, at that point, owned a slender 11-10 advantage over the Blue Devils with 9 minutes, 23 seconds left in the Carrier Dome game between ACC lacrosse rivals.
“Clary crossed midfield and soon spied Tucker Dordevic near the right crease. He flung a pass that sailed a bit high. Dordevic speared it, pirouetted and flicked a one-handed shot between his legs.
“The ball beat Duke goalie Mike Adler and triggered pandemonium on the Syracuse sideline, so spectacular was Dordevic’s execution.”
In the post-game press conference, Gait downplayed the goal as “reactionary,” a necessary adjustment to an errant pass, and even teased Dordevic for taking 22 shots. The redshirt junior finished with five goals and two assists on 5-for-22 shooting in Syracuse’s 14-10 victory — its second straight win after dropping four of its first six games and falling out of the national rankings. The Orange are back in the Nike/USA Lacrosse Division I Men’s Top 20 at No. 18 this week.
But if Syracuse makes a run in the ACC and rediscovers its swagger, undoubtedly we will point to this win and that goal as the true beginning of the Gait era. When the Hall of Famer became just the fifth head coach in the program’s 106-year history last June, he touted the return of an experimental brand of lacrosse he and his twin brother, Paul, popularized as players from British Columbia in the 1980s and 1990s. He spoke of a must-see style of play that would bring throngs of fans back to the Dome.
In the fall, fifth-year senior midfielder Brendan Curry told USA Lacrosse Magazine’s Nelson Rice, “This year we’ll do a lot of things that have never been seen before.”