Owen Vance is a standout defenseman from the ADVNC NDP 2026 team going to play at Rutgers University this Fall.
Vance grew up in the Portland, Oregon area and was introduced to lacrosse in the first grade. “My best friend’s dad was from the East Coast and knew about lacrosse,” Vance said. “I really wanted to play a physical sport, but my parents didn’t want me to play football or hockey. So I joined my friend and started playing for the Lake Oswego Youth Lacrosse rec team. I still remember that first practice. I got to hit kids and be creative on the field. I fell in love with lacrosse right away. It was super fun.”
Vance (#35) playing with Lake Oswego Youth Lacrosse.
“Lake Oswego Youth Lacrosse had a bunch of really great dad coaches,” said Owen’s dad, Matt Vance. “They had a bunch of East Coast guys who had moved out to Oregon and lacrosse was kind of a new sport to our area back then. Owen started playing and we found it to be a really good community of kids and parents and Owen just fit right in. It was a different experience from baseball. Lacrosse was very athlete focused. Owen could just go out there with his buddies and play. It was more free for the players than other sports he had tried.”
“I still remember one of the very first lacrosse drills I ever did,” Owen said. “It was a 3 v 2 ground ball drill, and I remember the coach threw the ball out, and I hit one of the kids so that my teammate was free to be able to scoop the GB and it felt great. I loved it. Being able to play a sport that was both physical and fast felt amazing to me. I still love the sport in the same way today. I knew right then that I fell in love with the game, and I still love it the same way today.”
In addition to playing lacrosse, Owen also played travel basketball through middle school. He added travel club lacrosse in the 5th grade. He had been playing midfield, but wasn’t seeing the playing time he wanted since he was playing up a year and competing with kids that had more midfield experience than him. “One day, my coach asked me if I wanted to try and play defense with a long pole,” Owen said. That coach told me I would have a lot more fun taking away a guy’s dream of scoring than I would have had actually scoring myself. I will always remember that line he told me. I fell in love with playing defense right away.”
Vance is a 4 year letter winner with Jesuit HS in Portland, OR
Owen started traveling to the East Coast with 3D Upstate. He soon joined the predecessor to Team Oregon in the 6th grade. That allowed him to start playing for ADVNC NDP. “NDP was amazing,” Owen said. “ADVNC welcomed all the Oregon players with open arms and they were so excited to have us. The combination of coaches including Josh Peck, Tim O’Brien and Britton Stuart was amazing. I feel like they always appreciated us as players and worked to elevate our game.”
“We had really been looking for a team like ADVNC NDP for Owen,” said Matt Vance. “NDP became an opportunity for Owen at the perfect time. We wanted to find a great team for him to play in top level tournaments on the East Coast. We had friends who just couldn’t believe all the East Coast travel we were doing, but Owen really loved it. We’d get on a plane on Friday, go out to the East Coast, he’d play all weekend and we’d get back late Sunday night and he’d get up for school on Monday. He would do his schoolwork through all of that, and it really worked out perfectly. We were so happy that the ADVNC NDP came along when it did.”
“It was awesome playing on NDP with so many other great players,” Owen said. “The thing I noticed right away was our ball movement on offense. On defense, we were really focused on being dialed in on our clears. We were also very focused on our off ball defense. The schemes that Coach Britton taught us were a lot more advanced than I had seen before. It made me so excited. I felt like I had a newfound lacrosse IQ. Coach Britton pushed me to think about the game more deeply and how we all fit together into one defensive unit. It was a great time and I loved it.”
It was during COVID that Owen started to really become serious about wanting to play lacrosse in college. “I was playing a lot of tournaments back East at that point and my dad and I were spending a ton of time on the road together. We were really investing a lot into it. Finding joy, success and sometimes failure on the East Coast. I think just seeing the level of competition and what my level of my commitment needed to be… that’s when the switch flipped for me. It was then that I decided that I really wanted to play in college.”
Around that same time, Owen decided that he also really wanted to go to Jesuit High School in Portland. “I saw so much opportunity at Jesuit,” Owen said. “Jesuit sends a lot of kids into college athletics. Their lacrosse program is phenomenal and their academics are really great too.”
Owen was accepted into Jesuit and going there has been a huge driver of his success. “It’s been unreal,” he said. “Everyone at Jesuit is focused on being the best they can be in everything they do. Everyone has chosen to be there. It’s just a lot of people who are all pushing hard to be the best at what they do. The guys on the lacrosse team were super loving and welcoming to me.”
Owen made the Jesuit varsity lacrosse team as a freshman. He has been named First Team All State and has won two state championships as a Crusader. His high school experience, combined with playing for ADVNC NDP, prepared him for his college recruiting summer of 2024. Owen said he relied on his club coaches like Tim O’Brien and Chris Rotelli with ADVNC and Bill Gleason and Ross Scott with Team Oregon to help prepare him and then guide him through the process.
When September 1st came, Owen got calls from a lot of college coaches but he continued to seek opportunities from other schools that didn’t show a ton of interest at first. “I was really aiming to play at a big time college lacrosse program that also had good academics.”
Owen started to focus on Rutgers University. Both Ross Scott at Team Oregon and another NDP Coach, Andrew Parilla played for the Scarlet Knights. They helped him get in touch with the Rutgers coaching staff and also shared their view of Owen as a player with the coaches at Rutgers. Once there was interest, Owen flew to New Jersey for a visit.
Owen and his dad were very impressed by Rutgers at the outset. “It felt like the Rutgers coaches wanted Owen for the player he was,” said Matt Vance. “He’s a bigger, bruising, close defender. They wanted that. Coach Brecht and Coach Ryan did a great job of showing us what Rutgers lacrosse was all about on and off the field. Seeing the new Rodkin Center and meeting some of the players on the team made the place feel very appealing.”
Owen really liked the entire coaching staff at Rutgers. “It felt like a family and it felt like they would be amazing coaches for me. I really got a great feel for the coaches. They were focused on building a great lacrosse program but they were also focused on the success of the guys in the program in school and in life too.”
“Having a great business school at Rutgers and having it so close to New York City was a big plus,” said Matt Vance. “They do a great job connecting current players with alumni in the NYC business world. It felt like the coaches are very in tune with big time lacrosse, the current players and the alumni. On his recent visit, he got to meet the new 2026 recruits as well as the new recruiting and offensive coordinator Scott Bieda. Rutgers is doing the right things and attracting the right people as they work hard to build on their success over the past decade.”
With the recruiting process behind him, Owen looks back on his journey and gives special attention to a few coaches who have both inspired him and helped him over the years.
“I’ve spent a lot of time training with Colin Squires (PLL Whipsnakes LSM and South South Founder),” Owen said. “He’s an Oregon native and he has helped me a lot. I spent many Sunday mornings working with Coach Squires. He gave me a lot of great drills and pushed me to get better super hard. He’s been a big role model for me. I also went to a camp when I was younger coached by Kyle Hartzell. He was super skilled and physical as a player, and he was also an amazing coach. I like to watch highlights of both Squires and Hartzell and learn from them.”
With Owen’s high school lacrosse journey nearly complete, he has the following advice for younger players who wish to play at a high level in college. “It’s really about loving the game. Make the game fun. If it’s not something you love, it is not going to work out. I love to train and workout with my friends. I love to compete with them. That competition brings out the fun. Find others around you to help push you to get better. Growing up with guys in Oregon, we see ourselves as underdogs. That has pushed us all to keep grinding together. The combination of working on my game and working with my buddies who have the same goals has given us all the opportunity to play at the next level of the game.”