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One of lacrosse's greatest champions has written a manual for success on and off the field.

Paul Rabil, the athlete-turned-entrepreneur who reinvented professional lacrosse by co-founding the Premier Lacrosse League in 2018, will publish his first book, The Way of the Champion: Pain, Persistence and the Path Forward (Portfolio Penguin, May 7, 2024). The book is made up of short lessons drawing on Rabil's own experiences and learnings from some of the most successful names in sports and business, including Mark Cuban, Serena Williams, and Bill Belichick, who wrote the foreward for The Way of the Champion. Many of the lessons come from former guests on Rabil's Suiting Up podcast, including Steph Curry, Olympian Abby Wambach, and Venus Williams.

The idea to write the book first came to Rabil at the suggestion of bestselling author and entrepreneur Ryan Holiday, a friend and investor in the PLL. On his way to becoming a seven-time champion lacrosse player, Rabil read sports psychology books and athlete autobiographies, but never found a roadmap to achieve his ultimate goal: to become the greatest lacrosse player in the world. The Way of the Champion is the kind of book Rabil had been seeking.

"How often do we find ourselves using sports metaphors to make sense of what's complex?" Rabil says. "That's why sports transition so well into business. There are common principles that I attempted to bring out of these passages and short chapters that anyone can apply to whatever they're doing."

One chapter in the book focuses on the difference between giving up and letting go, which can be the difference between failure and success, according to Rabil. "While I was writing this book I was going through my retirement from lacrosse, which for an athlete is the ultimate act of letting go," Rabil says, adding that letting go is not a one-time event. "It's an ongoing practice and it is part of your journey of progress."

A two-time MVP of Major League Lacrosse, Rabil co-founded the PLL with his brother Mike after years of frustration watching others try and fail to make the sport successful at the pro level. The PLL celebrated its fifth anniversary on October 22, shortly after its fifth season set league viewership records and grew ticket sales 20 percent year-over-year.

In addition to running the PLL for the past five years, Rabil also worked alongside USA Lacrosse, the sport's governing body in the U.S., to advocate for the inclusion of lacrosse in the Olympics. Last week, the International Olympic Committee announced it would add lacrosse to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The announcement marked a return to the Olympics for lacrosse, which was a medaled sport at the 1904 and 1908 Summer Olympics and a demonstration sport in 1928, 1932, and 1948.

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