Will Bufkin is a standout attackman from the ADVNC San Francisco and NDP ‘25 team signed to play at Bryant University, starting next Fall.
Will’s dad, Dicko Bufkin, was a standout lacrosse player at Colorado College. He has helped Will’s lacrosse development from an early age.
“I started out by giving him a golf club,” said Dicko Bufkin. “Then I gave him a tennis racquet. When he was six, I gave him his first lacrosse stick. He took to it right away. He was a natural. We quickly got him a rebounder and goal in the yard, and he put a lot of time in. He just loved it.”
“Lacrosse was fun for me, right away,” said Will Bufkin. “It was fun to play catch with my dad. We played all the time. I loved shooting at the corner targets on my goal and playing on my rebounder. I spent a ton of time out there in the yard. Eventually I convinced my older sister to put some pads on and get in goal. That was fun too!”
A native of Carmel, CA, Will first played for the Monterey Tribe rec club, a club his dad has helped organize for many years. After a few years of playing for that team, he decided to try out for ADVNC.
“We knew a few other families down here in the Monterey area that were playing for ADVNC,” said Dicko Bufkin. “Will was having so much fun playing lacrosse, we decided to have him try out.”
“I liked ADVNC right away,” said Will Bufkin. “ADVNC exposed me to better competition. The practices were high level and fun. Playing with better players and against better teams helped me get better.”
Will at the first NDP Training Camp, in Squaw Valley.
Dicko started coaching his son from the beginning. At ADVNC, he served as an assistant coach on Will’s teams from his second year in the Program up till 8th grade. “Having Will play for ADVNC made him a better player, but coaching as an assistant coach with ADVNC made me a much better coach,” Dicko Bufkin said. “Working with Matt Bond (ADVNC SF Director, and former player at Johns Hopkins) and seeing him implement Hopkins style practices for younger kids was amazing. It made Will so much better. The speed and complexity of those practices were a huge advantage for him and his teammates.”
Eventually, Will tried out and made the first ADVNC NDP team and went to the inaugural NDP Training Camp in Squaw Valley. “That was one of the most fun camps I’ve ever been to,” Will recalled. “It was so cool to meet all the kids from Seattle and San Francisco. I became really close with them, and eventually the NDP players from Oregon as well. I’ve made a ton of friends all over the West Coast through NDP.”
“It was so fun to see the difference in competition when he moved from playing on the Peninsula to playing with the boys on ADVNC SF,” recalled Will’s mom, Tiffany Bufkin. “And then, when he started with NDP and we started traveling to the East Coast, that was amazing to see how much better he got as well.”
“NDP definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone,” said Will. “Learning how to play against bigger and stronger kids that weren’t on the West Coast was a super good learning experience. I learned that I had to work a lot harder to score, and as a team, we had to find new ways to win. As I kept going back East, it just made me better and better.”
“At one point in this journey, Dicko and I looked at each other and wondered if we were crazy for having our son play so much lacrosse,” said Tiffany Bufkin. “We were worried he would burn out. But he loved it. That was the fun part. He would pick up his stick every single day without anyone telling him to.”
At one point, Will said he almost did burn out on lacrosse. “The summer before my sophomore year was really hard,” he recalled. “We stayed on the East Coast for 5 straight weeks and it was hot and miserable. When I got home, I had enough lacrosse. I didn’t touch a stick for 2 months and focused on water polo. But that was the only time I felt like this was a grind.”
Bufkin is an All-American at Stevenson School.
That’s when Will started working out a lot with ADVNC SF & NDP Coach as well as one of ADVNC’s Directors of Training, Will Casertano. “If it wasn’t for having Coach Casertano as a mentor and sounding board, I’m not sure Will would’ve gotten through that period,” Tiffany Bufkin said. “He helped push Will into that next season.”
While Coach Casertano has been a huge influence, so too has ADVNC Founder & CEO Coach Rotelli. Will Bufkin said he leaned on Coach Rotelli a lot heading into and then through the college recruiting process. “First off, Coach Rotelli helped a lot with getting me into really good showcases and tournaments. Those helped me get in front of the right college coaches right before the recruiting window opened up. I talked with Rotelli and Casertano a lot through that time. They helped me learn what to say in emails I sent coaches. Then, when I could talk to coaches on the phone, they helped me through that process. They also spoke on my behalf to all the coaches for me. That was super helpful.”
“When September first rolled around I honestly didn’t know what to expect,” said Will. “But when the day did come I received multiple texts and calls from schools, a big sigh of relief. I wasn’t expecting much contact from coaches until later in the fall but I was super pumped once I got those calls”.
Eventually, Will and his dad flew to the East Coast and visited three schools. When he came home, his parents said he told them very little about the trip and basically went off on his own for a week.
“That week, I talked a lot with Coach Casertano, Coach Rotelli and Justin Clymo, the Athletic Director at my school (Stevenson School, in Pebble Beach). We broke down every layer of the three schools I visited. I knew I wanted a smaller school and I knew I did not want to go to a school in a big city. I loved the coaches at Bryant. Everything just pointed to Bryant.”
“We had not seen him basically that whole week,” said Tiffany Bufkin. “But then he sort of emerged and said, I’m about to call Coach Ross and commit to Bryant. So he called him right then and told him he wanted to be a Bulldog. Coach Ross said to Will, ‘this is a really good day for you and a really good day for us.’ It was just an awesome moment.”
Looking back on the journey, the Bufkins stress how much they love their ADVNC 2025 family.
“All the guys in my group are super fun and funny and supportive of each other. I will get to play against a bunch of them in college, and I am really looking forward to that. But it’s going to suck next month when our ADVNC journey is over.”
“I am going to be sad when it’s over,” Tiffany Bufkin said. “We’ve had a mom’s group chat for several years and have shared many memories together on and off the field. I know we all have formed a bond that will last a lifetime. We look forward to following this special group of 2025’s as they embark on this next chapter of their lives.”
“We don’t have a bad person in this ADVNC group,” Dicko Bufkin said. “Every parent has celebrated the other kids’ success with the same fervor as their own. It really has been a family for us. Just a great group of kids and parents. We will miss it a lot.”