The phrase “work hard, play hard” is so commonplace in the American lexicon that it’s almost an afterthought. Now-graduated attacker Liam Connors has become the embodiment of the mantra from the first day he picked up a lacrosse stick.

His freshman year with Erie, alongside fellow standout Charlie O’Brien, Connors helped lay the groundwork that led the program toward its first Class 4A state championship just last month. Liam’s father, Shane Connors, remembers their first day donning the orange jerseys in 2021 vividly.

“Him and Charlie were great going in,” Shane said. “The first fall ball game, I’ll never forget that. The other players on the Erie team, upperclassmen, were kind of like, ‘Who are these kids?’ And then I think the two of them ended up scoring all the goals. I remember (head coach Nick Mandia) telling me the other players were like, ‘Where did you find these guys?’”

The pernicious pair ended their opening high school season with a combined 78 goals. Fast-forward to this spring, Liam completed his final year with the program with 61 goals and 36 assists, ranking him third in the entire state — Class 4A and Class 5A — for points.

Liam’s parents ensured that he and his sister, Lucy, always had every resource at their disposal to improve upon their lacrosse skills, whether that was signing them up for clinics or building a training area — equipped with nets and a radar gun — in Shane’s shop.

Their undeniable talent on the field earned Liam the BoCoPreps.com boys lacrosse player of the year and Lucy the BoCoPreps.com girls lacrosse player of the year. Liam realized his state championship dream a year after Lucy did with Mead.

Liam served as Erie’s much-needed catalyst during last month’s state championship victory over Northfield, netting two rapid-succession goals following a short lightning delay to give the Tigers a 9-6 advantage in the third quarter.

The Nighthawks couldn’t recover after that.

“I didn’t have the best half, and a lot of us didn’t,” Liam explained. “We were in the locker room. We had time to talk about what we were doing wrong. It’s a game of runs, so it’s like I score one, and then Tyler (Keating) is like, ‘Oh, I need one too.’ Once those two happen, everyone just starts piling on, and so it motivates everyone and it gets people going.”

He finished the game with three goals and four assists. He and his fellow team leaders knew that if they had any chance of shooting down the Nighthawks, it would have to start with them.

He’s embraced that role alongside O’Brien for the past four years.

“We got thrown into it and that kind of helped as well because we had to get used to it quick, and then we ended up finding a rhythm,” Liam said. “We were responsible for how the team was performing. If the team was doing bad, we had to talk to everyone. We were held accountable, we were holding other people accountable and they were holding us accountable.”

Next year, in his first season with the University of Denver, he hopes to make an impact in any way he can, no matter what that might look like.