Photo Credits: Peraza, World Lacrosse | Smoke, Gilda Rottman

COLCHESTER, Vt. - Two men with ties to the Saint Michael's College men's lacrosse program met halfway around the world last week during the 2025 World Lacrosse Men's U20 Championship in Korea. Incoming first-year Zeke Peraza (Los Angeles, Calif./Saint Francis), one of the tournament's top scorers, is playing for Mexico, while alumnus Taylor Smoke '09 is a member of the Haudenosaunee Nationals coaching staff.
 
Twenty teams are competing at the 10th World Lacrosse Men's U20 Championship, which dates back to 1988, and this year is being held in Seogwipo, Jeju, South Korea. Squads competed in five four-team pools before advancing to tournament and placement play, which continues this week.
 
Peraza, the Team Mexico captain who earned USA Lacrosse All-America honors while playing high school lacrosse in Los Angeles last year, is tied for fifth among all players with 11 goals while firing the second-most shots (45). His three assists leave him tied for eighth in points (14). The lion's share of players Peraza trails in the goals race either hail from or are committed to NCAA Division I institutions.
 
Team Mexico went 2-1 during Pool D play, as Peraza scored 10 goals in those three contests, including two in Mexico's lone setback, 7-4 to Pool D winner Ireland. He added a goal and an assist during a heartbreaking 7-6 loss to undefeated Pool C champion England in a play-in round game, when a teammate's tying bid was denied at the final buzzer. Mexico takes on Pool B's The Netherlands on Thursday in a 9-12 Placement game.
 
Smoke and the Haudenosaunee Nationals competed in Pool A with fellow international heavyweights Australia, Canada and the United States. They lost by a single goal to Australia and 13-8 to Canada, whose only loss thus far has been sustained by one goal to the USA. The Haudenosaunee Nationals open postseason play on Thursday with a quarterfinal contest against Pool E titlist Puerto Rico, the tournament's highest-scoring outfit.
 
Smoke continues cultivating the next generation of Haudenosaunee Nationals athletes following a standout playing career himself, as the defender helped the Haudenosaunee Nationals take third place at the 2014 and 2018 Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL) World Lacrosse Championships. The Haudenosaunee Nationals are the national lacrosse team of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, and represent more than 125,000 Iroquois living primarily in New York, Ontario and Quebec. During his undergraduate years, Smoke saw time in 58 games as a Purple Knight between 2006 and 2009, recording 93 ground balls as a long-stick midfielder and a defender and causing 25 turnovers. In 2012, Smoke appeared in the lacrosse-themed movie "Crooked Arrows".