by Keller Brown • Times of San Diego
March 7, 2025, 10:35 p.m.

Lacrosse has never been as popular a sport compared to football, basketball and baseball, among others. On the West Coast in particular, it took current Torrey Pines High School lacrosse coach Jono Zissi driving around to P.E. classes in 2004 on his spare time with a lacrosse stick and small nets to try and introduce and teach the sport to young kids.

“It was a grind,” Zissi said. “There were some very humble times in the beginning for sure.”

Zissi said he was laughed at for trying to introduce something new and fresh to kids. To him, life is all about timing. He spent his years as a graduate student at the University of San Diego looking around, trying to buy time to dive deeper into the lacrosse world.

Fast forward to 2025, and Zissi and his Falcons lacrosse team at Torrey Pines will look to win their seventh consecutive CIF title, with their season already underway. With a program that has sent multiple players to play Division 1 lacrosse, Zissi and his team don’t get caught up with the rankings and who they’re playing each week.

“The kids need to realize they are playing for something much bigger than themselves,” he said.
Towards the end of his master’s degree program in education, Zissi put his schooling to use in 2006, serving as a youth instructor for the West Coast Starz, a youth lacrosse program for grades 5-12 west of the Mississippi, which he still helps to this day. 

Although he doesn’t actually teach anymore, which he did at The Bishop’s School from 2006-2009, he still scratches that itch by giving back to the youth players.

“Be who you needed when you were that age,” Zissi said. “Sports was my life growing up.” 

In search of another CIF title, Zissi doesn’t believe that the wins are what helped define him as a coach. He said it was the losses, specifically three one-goal championship game defeats, that helped get him over the hump.

“Those three heartbreaking championship game losses over the years were really the moments in the games that actually defined me and made me the coach I am today,” Zissi said. “Those failures were really gut wrenching.”

Those losses helped him evolve into a better coach, which in turn benefitted Torrey Pines and its lacrosse program, one that alumni still pay attention to, even after moving to the collegiate level.

Miles Botkiss, a 22-year-old senior lacrosse player at Harvard, still watches the livestreams when he can. Despite the gap between high school and college athletics, Botkiss thought he benefited from a great prep program.

“When I got to college it felt (like) a continuation of what I was already doing at Torrey Pines,” Botkiss said. “Coach Zissi has provided me with a ton of life lessons, not only on the lacrosse field but outside the field, really instilled all this hard work and the value of camaraderie.”

The anticipation of a Friday night lacrosse game was certainly felt by Botkiss, who said he and his friends would run around with their sticks at the game before he could even remember.

“That was always the best part of the weekend,” Botkiss said.

Zissi and Botkiss’ bond didn’t start in high school, it started in fifth grade when Zissi was coaching youth programs. The relationship did so much for Botkiss and others, and the fact that he was there as a youth coach and a high school coach further tightened the bond.

“When I got to the high school level, I could form that player-coach relationship even more, just because things get a little bit more intense during that jump,” Botkiss said.

Botkiss grew up admiring and looking up to the high school players at Torrey Pines. He thought of them as role models, and he is more than happy to return the favor as an alumni any chance he gets.

One player who is close to becoming an alumni is current team captain and West Point commit John Prior. The 18-year-old senior knows what it is like to be a part of a special program like Torrey Pines, and that only the best are going to touch the field.

“The championships speak for themselves,” Prior said. “The hard-working, elite culture that coach Zissi has brought to the table. It’s one of those things that now that I am a senior I really look back on it, I really am blessed to be here.”

Prior said that as a freshman he was thrown into the varsity team and a starting role very quickly. This helped him get to know the upperclassmen, some who are playing in college now. Some of the players pop in at practice during the season, and even those who can’t make it in person are tuning into games.

“Whenever we have these big in-county games, out-of-county games, he (Zissi) is getting texts from 10, 11, 12 alumni being like ‘Good luck tonight, I’ll be watching the livestream,’” Prior said. “That’s pretty impactful, just how much the guys who come before us, who built this program just really bought into what’s going on, what we’re doing now.”

The theme of the team, something that is on the team room wall, is “Leave it better than you found it.” The entire team buys into the saying, and it is reflected in the current and former players’ mindsets and respect for the program. The relationship between Zissi and his players, both current and former, goes beyond the field.

“I’ve been to almost 30 weddings of kids I’ve coached,” Zissi said. 

A team that focuses on success on the field will find it, but those who share a bond off the field will reach the ultimate goal, as Torrey Pines has many times in recent years. 

“Create what you wish existed,” Zissi said. “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”