Kevin Unterstein announced today that the 2021 PLL season was his last season as a player. Unterstein has been a professional lacrosse player since 2008.
Unterstein was high school All-America at Shoreham-Wading River High where he would bring home four Suffolk County championships along with a state title. Unterstein committed to Hofstra where he redshirted his freshman year in 2004.
During his remaining time at Hofstra, Unterstein was an essential short-stick defensive midfielder for the Pride from 2005-2008. He was a USILA All-America honorable mention his junior year and was named to the All-CAA second team as well as the All-CAA Tournament team.
He tallied up 70 ground balls as a senior and played a vital roll in Hofstra’s CAA conference title run that year. Unterstein was an All-CAA first team selection his senior year and was named the CAA Defensive Player of the Year and the CAA Championship Tournament Most Valuable Player.
Following graduation, Unterstein was drafted 20th overall in the 2008 MLL Collegiate Draft by the New Jersey Pride where he made his professional debut. Unterstein played for the Pride, New York Lizards, and Denver Outlaws over the course of eleven years in the MLL tallying up 248 groundballs and 89 caused-turnovers as a midfielder. He was named to the MLL All-Star team during the 2014 season and won an MLL championship with the Lizards.
Unterstein would transition over to the PLL following the 2018 season where he became a member of the newly founded Atlas. He would be traded to the Redwoods in the middle of his third season with the Atlas. He finished his career with 144 games played, 31 goals, and 297 groundballs. Unterstein was also a member of the gold-medal winning United States Men’s National Team that competed in the 2018 FIL World Championships in Israel.
Unterstein has been a coach just as long as he has been a professional player as well. Following his graduation from Hofstra, he became an assistant under Bill Tierney at Princeton in 2009, working with the defense and face-off specialists. He would eventually follow Tierney over to Denver where he would coach the defensive midfielders and assist assistant coach Trevor Tierney with the defense.
Following his time at Denver, Kevin Unterstein would become an assistant coach at his alma mater, Hofstra where would spend eight seasons with the pride. Unterstein was named the defensive coordinator of the North Carolina Tar Heels back in August of 2018. In his first year at Carolina, he led a UNC defense which gave up just 10 goals a game and featured ACC Freshman of the Year Caton Johnson and third-team All-America Jack Rowlett.
