Lacrosse Guide 2020

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LACROSSE GUIDE 2020

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inside ETCHED IN HISTORY The number 22 has been associated with a top Syracuse men’s lacrosse player since Gary Gait started wearing it in 1988.

Page 5

Design by Talia Trackim Presentation Director Cover photo by Molly Gibbs Senior Staff Photographer

BACK FOR MORE Emily Hawryschuk had 75 goals last year and her 203 points is 10th in SU women’s lacrosse history. But she’s still missing a national title.

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lacrosse guide 2020 3

WELCOME

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After an especially eventful offseason, it’s time for lacrosse in Syracuse.

Although both the men’s and women’s teams are ranked in the preseason top-10, they have vastly different expectations. The men, led by the return of Tucker Dordevic and X-factor Brett Kennedy, are trying to get back to the national prominence the program’s lacked in the past decade. All-American senior attack Emily Hawryschuk and the women have as good a chance as ever to win their first national championship in team history. Looming over both programs is the return of the famed No. 22 jersey that’s inspired generations of players, the number women’s head coach Gary Gait pioneered in 1988 and transfer Chase Scanlan will don in 2020.

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GREATNESS

SHADOW OF

4 lacrosse guide 2020

Gary Gait switched to No. 22 in 1988 and started a legacy.

Loyola transfer Chase Scanlan is the latest to join it.

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senior staff writer

Photo by Elizabeth Billman

C

asst. photo editor

ASEY POWELL WON’T FORGET HIS FIRST TRIP TO THE CARRIER DOME. It was May of 1988, and the Orange were hosting Pennsylvania in the NCAA semifinal.

“They were flying around. They were cocky.

They were confident,” Powell said. “And I just looked down, and I was like, ‘Man, that’s what I want to do.

That’s what I want to be.’”

With Syracuse down 2-1 in the second quarter, Gary Gait received the ball from behind the net and faced UPenn’s zone defense. With no options to get in front of the goal, he ran right at the back of the crease, leapt and dunked the ball into the net — “Air Gait.”

From that day forward, Powell was Gait in his backyard, his brother Ryan was Paul Gait and the youngest Powell, Michael, was the opposing goalie.

Since Gait first wore No. 22 in 1988, the jersey has represented a Syracuse player expected to become one of the best players in the country, save for three years in which no one wore it. Between 1988 and 2004, the player wearing 22 was an All-American every year — 13 first-teamers — and Syracuse won eight of its 11 NCAA championships, one of which was later vacated (1990). The Orange made 22-straight Final Fours from 1983 to 2004.

The player wearing the number and the profile of the sport’s winningest program go “hand in hand,” current ESPN lacrosse analyst and former Syracuse player Paul Carcaterra said. The Orange made just one Final Four in the last decade, and the 22 jersey was shelved for the last two years before it was given this season to transfer Chase Scanlan. The No. 22 has been worn in eight of the past 10 seasons — since SU’s last national title — and in only three of those years the player earned All-American honors.

“I look at it as a compliment that if you wear that number, you’re held to a higher standard,” Gait said.

“And you gotta come here to deliver, and I think that’s something that every player that comes to Syracuse wants to do.”

At Syracuse, Gait had to wait until his sophomore year in 1988 to switch to No. 22. Gait wanted to honor his former Canadian junior box lacrosse teammate John Crowther, who’d been murdered in 1984.

Growing up, Gait watched Canadian box lacrosse players use fakes and deception. Any new dodge or stick move he saw, he would practice until he could replicate it. Then Gait gave it his own twist.

Gary was like “a magician on the field,” said JoJo Marasco, who wore No. 22 from 2011-13. He inspired those who wore the jersey to try new things on the field no one else did, Marasco added. Gait and Paul normalized full-field behind-the-back passes, no-look passes and even forced a rule change to prevent future “Air Gait” plays. With Gait, a four-time All-American and three-time champion, the legend of 22 was born.

“You gotta understand something: Gait’s the greatest player to ever play the sport,” Carcaterra said. “He left Syracuse as the greatest college player ever, so if his number was 51, that would have been the number.”

••• Midway through the fall of 1994, Roy Simmons Jr. approached Powell, then a freshman, in Manley Field House. The attack said he’d “started hot” in some scrimmages that October and knew he was going to be in the starting lineup. Powell didn’t know if he would wear 22, but in the back of his mind, he was playing for it.

“The number, the jersey’s available. I want you to wear No. 22,” Powell remembers Simmons Jr. telling him. “Do you accept it?”

Seven years after watching his hero take off from behind the net, Powell would wear his number. Powell took the jersey from Charlie Lockwood, a fourtime All-American who won the national championship in 1993.

From the start, Powell “was a freak show,” Carcaterra said, and his toughness immediately earned everyone’s respect. Powell was an All-American attack his freshman year. The next year, he played midfield for the first time in his career and won the national midfielder of the year award.

In the 1997 season-opener against Virginia — one of

college lacrosse’s greatest games — Powell made one of the sport’s greatest plays, Carcaterra said. He picked up a ground ball on the defensive end and was checked toward the sideline, but evaded three Virginia players and continued down the field. As Powell neared the goal, two defenders slid to cover him, and he flipped the ball behind his back into the bottom left corner of the net.

Powell scored a Syracuse-record 13 points and the game-winning goal as the Orange won 22-21.

“When he put that jersey on,” Carcaterra said, “it’s like, you know, not to sound corny or anything, it’s, back then, you kind of had a cape on your back.”

Two years younger, Casey Powell’s brother Ryan came to Syracuse in 1997. Once the oldest Powell graduated in 1998 and left to play lacrosse professionally, Ryan donned No. 22. During Powell’s senior season, Simmons Jr. temporarily gave Ryan the jersey during a fall tournament while Powell was injured, so Ryan was confident he’d be the next 22.

Coming out of high school, it wasn’t a guarantee Ryan would even play for Syracuse. He lived in “the shadow of Casey” for nearly all of his life growing up, he said. If he went to Syracuse, that would continue.

Loyola was his first option outside of the Orange.

When he went to visit the Greyhounds, they treated him to a steak and lobster tail dinner. In the locker room, they’d printed out a No. 22 jersey with his name on the back.

Ryan thought: “Oh man, that’s cool.”

The next weekend, Ryan visited Syracuse. Simmons Jr. took him to Wegmans for dinner, gave him a tray and said, “Go ahead and get whatever you want.” It wasn’t surf and turf, but it sold him.

“Down to earth, easy conversation and not having to get a suit and tie on to go out to a real nice meal,” Ryan said. “Ultimately, it came down to that, and at the end of the day, I really wanted to play with Casey.”

Ryan said he didn’t have the creativity or quickness of his older brother or Gait, but brought an “old school, tough guys game.” He didn’t try to go around his defenders. He went through them.

With 90 seconds left to go against Princeton in the 2000 national championship game, Ryan assisted on Syracuse’s 13th goal of the game, which tied Powell for the Orange all-time points record of 287. He always wanted to be his older brother, and he succeeded.

After the final buzzer, Powell and Ryan embraced on the field as the rest of the Syracuse team poured onto the field to celebrate. Then, Ryan went to where the youngest Powell brother, Michael, was sitting in the front row of the stands, took off his jersey and threw it to him, “I said, ‘Hey, this is yours now, buddy,’” Ryan remembers.

Michael became the first player to win the Tewaaraton Award twice and the first Syracuse player to ever win it after the award began in 2001. Only Lyle Thompson has won it twice since. Michael finished his Syracuse career with 307 points, still the most all-time in Syracuse history and won two national championships.

Gait began the legacy of the No. 22 at Syracuse, and 10 straight years of the Powell brothers raised it. They represented what young lacrosse players wanted to become.

“Like, to me, it’s a Gait/Powell jersey,” Carcaterra said. “That’s the way I look at it.”

••• When Dan Hardy came to Syracuse as a freshman in 2006, he was told to write down three options for his jersey number. He wrote down just one: 22.

By then, the number’s significance within the sport was solidified, and Hardy wore it throughout youth lacrosse and his senior year of high school after committing to the Orange.

“If I were to put down 22 and two other random numbers,” Hardy said, “It kind of shows I didn’t want it as much.”

No one had worn the No. 22 in 2005, and the Orange failed to reach the Final Four for the first time since 1983. After a Final Four return in 2006, SU went 5-8 and missed the tournament in Hardy’s sophomore season. In 2008, there was mounting pressure, not only to make a Final Four, but to win the national championship. Going back 20 years, every group of graduating seniors had reached the pinnacle of college lacrosse at least once in their four years at Syracuse.

After winning the 2008 title, there was a sense of relief, Hardy said.

At the same time, though, the No. 22 jersey was coming off 17-straight years of being an All-American.

Hardy broke the streak in 2006, but was an honorable mention in 2007, 2008 and 2009, also making the all-

tournament team in 2008 after eight goals and five assists helped lead the Orange to the title. The next year, Hardy assisted on Cody Jamieson’s game-winning goal to capture SU’s second-consecutive championship.

“Dan was under a microscope ‘cause he wore 22,” Carcaterra said. “If he wore 23, people would be like, ‘Solid middie man, that dude was legit.’”

Jamieson wore it for a year after Hardy left, but only managed an honorable mention All-American as the Orange fell in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Army. Then, Marasco wore the No. 22 from 2011 to 2013, becoming a Tewaaraton award finalist but never bringing SU a national title.

In the last decade, four new teams won a national championship, and Syracuse made just one Final Four.

The Orange’s recruiting power waned as a result.

“For a very, very, very long time, if you wanted to win a national championship, you went to Syracuse,” Jamieson said.

While other New York products have committed elsewhere — recruiting analyst Ty Xanders estimates six or seven top-100 recruits flipped from Syracuse to other schools in the past two years — the hometown kid that did stick around to wear No. 22 was Jordan Evans in 2014.

But his SU career was plagued with injuries from the start.

When he did play consistently his junior and senior years, his role on offense was vastly different to what he had at Jamesville-DeWitt, where he held the ball around 75% of the time. He was the first No. 22 to never be an All-American at Syracuse.

“I just think that most people couldn’t understand and fathom why I wasn’t doing flips in games and diving through the crease all the time,” Evans said.

After two years without a 22, Scanlan became the first since Evans when he announced his transfer from Loyola to Syracuse last July.

Syracuse head coach John Desko offered the jersey as part of the Orange’s pitch, but it wasn’t a selling point for the sophomore. Scanlan said he wanted to be closer to home so his family could watch him play.

Though the shine has worn off the No. 22 in the past decade, its legacy in central New York remains pertinent.

At media day, Scanlan didn’t expect multiple stations for photographs, three cameras pointing at his face and several media scrums. At Loyola, it was one picture then going into a small locker room for a few more, Scanlan said.

“It shows me that a lot of people around here care about the lacrosse, and it’s different,” Scanlan said. “A lot of kids dream about doing stuff like this. This is one place that can happen for you.”

The newest No. 22 played off the pressure associated with the number, saying he respected all the players who had worn the jersey before him and understands how much it means to people in Syracuse. Still, Evans said the pressure of the 22 jersey can be too much.

Perhaps, he said, it could’ve been retired after the Powell brothers.

But Casey Powell thinks a player wearing the number can spurn a program to the pinnacle of college lacrosse. For the better part of four decades at SU, it has.

“If a 22 goes, so does the program,” Powell said.

“YOU GOTTA UNDERSTAND SOMETHING: GAIT’S THE GREATEST PLAYER TO EVER PLAY THE SPORT,” CARCATERRA SAID. “HE LEFT SYRACUSE AS THE GREATEST COLLEGE PLAYER EVER, SO IF HIS NUMBER WAS 51, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER.”

Story by Arabdho Majumder

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armajumd@syr.edu | @aromajumder

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BUSINESS

UNFINISHED

6 lacrosse guide 2020

Emily Hawryschuk scored 75 goals last season and is one of the nation’s top attacks. Now, she just needs a national championship.

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lacrosse guide 2020 7

Story by Tim Nolan asst. copy editor

Photos by Elizabeth Billman asst. photo editor

asking if they could pass before practice and if she could show Brown the new move she’d taught herself since Tuesday.

“All of a sudden she comes in next practice ripping corners from the 8,” Brown said, “And I’m just like, ‘Well, if you practiced it enough, you’re right.”

Just two years after starting the sport, Hawryschuk started varsity as a freshman. She’d already solidified herself as the best player on her club team. She was the Monroe County Division 3 Player of the Year as a sophomore, three years after picking up the sport. But still, something was missing. She wanted to be a champion.

When Hawryschuk got her license during her senior year of high school, the first things she put in her Ford F-150 were her sticks and a bag of balls.

Sometimes, when she was driving home “to sit on the couch,” she said she’d stop at Dryer Road Park on the way to hone her shot.

Hawryschuk stopped playing with Lady Roc the summer after her junior year, as most 11th graders typically do in the program. Following her commitment to Syracuse, the family moved to Victor so they could be closer to campus. There, Hawryschuk led the Blue Devils to the Section V Class B championship. She finished her high school career with 291 goals and 87 assists, but, with Syracuse around the corner, that was over.

“I didn’t reminisce that much in high school,” Hawryschuk said, “I was focused on going forward.”

At Syracuse, Hawryschuk said she was no longer “leader of the pack.” She was a freshman, and even in the weight room she found herself just “a little above average.” On the field, head coach Gary Gait worked with her shooting form, trying to change her from a sidearm/underhand shooter to an overhand shooter.

By the end of the year, she finished with 38 goals and 48 points, both second-most on the team. She played in all 22 games, the final being a first-round loss to Boston College in the NCAA Tournament. She got to experience some of the emotions Gait and his team did in 2012, and they didn’t sit well.

When Hawryschuk went home, 10 reps became 12.

The workouts became more focused, and she became more active in structuring new ones every two months with her dad. The workouts became so intense, physically and cardiovascularly, that she said “it’s almost

“I JUST WANT TO WIN,” HAWRYSCHUK SAID, “THAT’S THE ONLY THING I WANTED TO DO AND THAT’S STILL THE ONLY THING I WANT TO DO NOW.”

A

LINE OF WHITE-AND-PURPLE JERSEYS ALL LEANED FORWARD, BENT AT THE WAIST, AS THOUGH A FENCE WAS HOLDING THEM BACK. They counted down with the clock — “Five!

Four! Three!” — on the screen behind each end zone. The clock hit zero, and everyone lunged forward.

For the seventh time in eight years, Northwestern women’s lacrosse had won the national title. Opposite the perennial champions were the newcomers. Some froze on the field. Some stared blankly ahead. It was Syracuse’s first finals appearance, and now, its first defeat.

Three hundred and eighty miles from Stony Brook University — host of the 2012 NCAA Tournament final — Emily Hawryschuk watched with mixed emotions.

The eighth-grader’s favorite player, Northwestern’s Shannon Smith, would be named Most Outstanding Player of the tournament. After playing the sport for just more than a year at the time, Hawryschuk realized she wanted a national title of her own — for Syracuse. Now a senior and the third-best player in the country — male or female — according to Inside Lacrosse, Hawryschuk has one last chance.

“I knew one day I wanted to do just that,” Hawryschuk said, “and I’ve been very vocal about it.”

Born about 90 minutes west of the Carrier Dome, Hawryschuk has been drawn to orange and blue her entire life. Her aunt attended Syracuse. Her father, Nick, grew up in Seneca Falls and discovered Syracuse lacrosse’s notable reputation in the area, he said.

But Hawryschuk was known for her ability to play baseball. And soccer. She simply didn’t have the time for or interest in lacrosse — until one night, when Hawryschuk was in seventh grade and Nick picked up a lacrosse stick on his way home from work. He purposefully picked the “worst pocket in the world you’d have to learn on,” figuring Hawryschuk was either going to hate the sport or fall in love with it. “[It was] too shallow,” Nick said, “Made it like a tennis racket to see how she could do with balancing it in there.”

Hawryschuk pounded away at the pocket, but no matter what she did, it stayed flat. Eventually, she gave up resisting. She began watching games on TV and practiced the moves she saw. Her balance and handeye coordination from the start was uncanny, Nick said. She completely bypassed the awkward phase.

By the end of eighth grade, she’d been called up to the varsity lacrosse team at Churchville-Chili Senior (New York) High School. She’d given up baseball and recently joined a travel lacrosse club called Lady Roc. In her first tournament, she quickly made an impression on her club coach, Kerrie Brown.

“I didn’t really have to coach her up,” Brown said, “She could just blend in and play.”

Off the field, Hawryschuk made a habit of going to the gym. Her father would prepare workouts for her, consisting mainly of deadlifts, bench presses and pullups. She ran sprints in her front lawn.

Then, Hawryschuk began to distinguish herself.

If Lady Roc had a practice on a Tuesday night, she would stay late after practice, play at home the next day and then text Brown Thursday afternoon,

like you never have to run.”

Hawryschuk returned her sophomore year to lead SU in goals and points. She noticed herself emerging in the weight room, and more teammates began looking up to her. But what struck Gait was her attention to the little details she was still refining.

“It’s just who she is,” Gait said, “She got better with every year. She wanted it. She wanted to be good.”

The few times she isn’t near a weight room or a Syracuse building, Hawryschuk is back home in Victor, coaching youth lacrosse to players between kindergarten and 11th grade. The girl who started playing in seventh grade now can’t let go of lacrosse.

Last season, she was unequivocally the best player on the team and one of the ACC’s top attack players. Her 75 goals were ninth in the country. The next-closest on the team was then-freshman Meaghan Tyrrell with 37, followed by classmate Megan Carney with 32. Still, Syracuse fell to Northwestern in the NCAA quarterfinals, leaving Hawryschuk with a similar feeling of dissatisfaction.

As a senior, Hawryschuk has done a little reminiscing. She’ll miss the bus rides, the “little bondings” on away trips, the karaoke parties, the team trips to the “mansion” in Florida. Unlike in high school, she can’t go much further. The only thing left to accomplish is a championship.

“I just want to win,” Hawryschuk said, “That’s the only thing I wanted to do, and that’s still the only thing I want to do now. I want to win a national championship.” tnolan@syr.edu | @tim_nolan10

PEED 4.

Incoming freshman class ranked No. 9 by IL Midfielder Katelyn Mashewske was the No. 30 recruit in her class while classmate Bianca Chevarie ranked No. 35. For next year, SU already has commitments from the No. 28 and No. 36 recruits in the 2020 class.

5.

6.

Hawryschuk invited to USA National Team training camp Hawryschuk joined 35 of the best women lacrosse players in the country last June in a tryout for the U.S. national squad. She later represented Team USA at the 2019 Fall Classic in Sparks, Maryland.

Sydney Pirreca hired as assistant coach

y wins gold at hampionship

After finishing her career at the University of Florida with the sixth-most points in program history, Pirreca joined Gary Gait’s coaching staff. The 2018 BIG EAST Midfielder of the Year has also previously coached for the Long Island Yellow Jackets Lacrosse club and volunteered at Mount Sinai High School.

(Photo courtesy of SU Athletics)

attack recorded 11 ncluding a goal in a, to help the U.S.

MEN

Review the main storylines from the offseason

After Kevin Donahue retired in August, Princeton head coach March was hired as Syracuse’s offensive coordinator. His 2019 offense ranked 11th in the country and averaged 14 goals per game, and March inherits a Syracuse group returning Tucker Dordevic and adding transfer Scanlan.

2. Pat March hired as OC

1.

Scanlan announces transfer, named next No. 22

3.

Four gradu the NLL

After scoring 43 goals during his freshman season at Loyola, Chase Scanlan entered the transfer portal and committed to Syracuse on July 2. In the process, he became the next player to don No. 22 for the Orange, ending a twoyear gap, in whno one in the SU program wore the number.

Four former Syracu drafted by NLL team season, including Ty overall), Bradley Vo McKinney (78th) an The four selections from any NCAA tea

UP TO S

8-9 lacrosse guide 2020

SPEED 5.

Porter represents Team Canada

uates drafted into

use players were ms after the 2019 Tyson Bomberry (10th oigt (62nd), Brad nd Austin Fusco (79th). s were tied for the most am alongside Virginia.

Orange netminder Drake Porter represented his home country of Canada in the US Lacrosse Fall Classic in October.

In two games, Porter split time in both games, a 12-11 loss to Team USA and 16-10 victory over defending national champions, Virginia.

4. Hiltz signing Syracuse’s Class of 2020 recruiting received a major boost when Owen Hiltz flipped from his verbal commitment to Denver and signed with the Orange.

The left-handed midfielder from Culver (Indiana) Military Academy is the No. 3 recruit in his class.

6.

Donahue leaves, Tommy Costanza arrives Only months after Donahue retired but remained on the Syracuse staff as a volunteer assistant, he stepped down from his new role on Jan. 14. Donahue told Syracuse.com that he “found (himself) mentally going in another direction.”

WOMEN

Review the main storylines from the offseason

After finishing ninth in the nation in goals (75) as a junior, Hawryschuk was one of 16 Division I women’s players to receive first-team All-America honors. The senior currently has 203 points, 10th-most in program history.

Syracuse’s sophomor goals and nine assists, the final against Canad win the tournament.

Megan Carn 2019 U-19 World

Emily Hawryschuk named IWLCA first-team All-American

1.

The sophomore played midfield for the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) national team this past summer. The team finished in 10th place, losing to Puerto Rico 8-7 in the ninth-place match. Jimerson appeared in six games her freshman year for SU.

3.

Jalyn Jimerson represents Haudenosaunee nations at U-19 World Championship

2.

UP TO

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BEST FOOT FORWARD

10 lacrosse guide 2020

After missing more than 500 days with a foot injury, Tucker Dordevic is back

Story by Mitchell Bannon asst. sports editor

Photo by Elizabeth Billman

H asst. photo editor

E SAT IN THE LOCKER ROOM WHILE EVERYONE AROUND HIM SLID ON THEIR SHOULDER PADS AND LACED THEIR CLEATS. His teammates walked onto the Carrier Dome turf while he sat in his stall. Everyone was getting ready for the game, for the 2019 season. But not him.

Tucker Dordevic put his face into his hands. He started to cry.

“This is a nightmare,” he thought. “How did this happen? Again.”

Dordevic hadn’t played a college lacrosse game in 271 days. He played his entire freshman year on an injured foot and spent the fall recovering from a mid-August surgery. He was back, healthy, but three days before Syracuse opened its 2019 season against Colgate, the day before his 20th birthday, Dordevic learned he would have to do it all over.

Teammates came up to him in the locker room after the game. “You’re good,” they’d say. He was forced to watch from the sidelines while Colgate, a team that finished 4-9 in 2019, stunned Syracuse in its own building. Maybe he could have helped, Dordevic said. But he couldn’t. Sitting in the locker room before that game was the mid-point of his 500-day absence: surgery,

rehabilitation, re-injury and rehab once again.

“A little part of me was like ‘I just failed my team,’” Dordevic said.

After two operations on his right foot within six months — and one missed season — Dordevic will be at the center of a Syracuse offense built around him — an offense he told his mom will lead the nation in goals, helping SU “kill teams,” he said, and average 20 goals per game. Dordevic was one of the country’s best freshman midfielders in 2018, but used all of last season to refocus, build muscle and work on his left hand. Now, the Orange need Dordevic to just stay on the field.

On Feb. 5, 2019, Dean Dordevic sat in an Atlanta cab when he received a call from his son. Dean could tell by the voice on the other end that it wasn’t good news.

Hours earlier, Dordevic jumped for a loose ball in the Ensley Athletic Center during practice. A teammate simultaneously rose for the ball, and the two collided in the air, crashing down at the 30-yard line.

“I thought you guys should know,” Dordevic said into the phone. “I broke my foot again.”

The Colgate loss grounded him, but it was also his final low point. When Syracuse started to win — beating Albany and Army — the redshirt sophomore began to embrace his time off.

It may sound “nuts,” but Dordevic is thankful he hurt his foot, he said.

All Dordevic wanted was to walk five steps, to not scoot around or have his partially protected foot freeze in the Syracuse winter. He just wanted to put two shoes on. But he knew a second surgery see dordevic page 14

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RELENTS

NEVER

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Playing boys’ lacrosse as a child shaped Megan Carney into the ‘fierce competitor’ she is today Story by Roshan Fernandez asst. digital editor

Photo by Molly Gibbs

F

senior staff photographer

ROM THE SIDELINES, MEGAN CARNEY’S PARENTS OFTEN HEARD PLAYERS WHINING. “He’s hitting me. Tell him to stop hitting me,” they’d complain. Between third and fifth grade, the “boy” wouldn’t relent.

“We would think, ‘Oh my god, he doesn’t even realize that’s a girl,” Kelly Carney, her mother, said.

After the games, Carney would take off her helmet, causing a revelation for the opposing team. She always loved that moment, her parents said.

Carney was one of two girls on the team when she played boys’ lacrosse in fourth grade, but it wasn’t like she took another boy’s spot. She earned it because she was a competitor, her father, Drue, said. She was one of the team’s best players, her brother AJ added.

When Carney played boys’ and girls’ lacrosse simultaneously in fifth grade, she brought the same level of aggression to both games, even getting yellow cards because she forgot the rules were different. And when she switched exclusively to girls lacrosse a year later, the transition was easy. She never feared getting hit because she knew girls wouldn’t hit that way, her mom said.

“She would run through a crowd of girls and people would be like ‘Oh my god,’” Kelly said. “But I’d say that, mentally, she was thinking ‘You can’t hit me, so how

are you going to stop me?’”

Those childhood experiences — playing against boys for five seasons — laid the groundwork for her future. During her freshman season at SU in 2019, the attack was the third-highest scorer on the team with 32 goals. She was named to Inside Lacrosse’s preseason All-American list in late January as an honorable mention. At Syracuse, teammates and head coach Gary Gait call Carney a “fierce competitor,” something that’s followed her from her backyard, through boys’ lacrosse and into the Carrier Dome.

“To be able to play against males, they’re going to push her to work a little bit harder because they’re not going to want to get beat out by a girl,” high school volleyball coach Nicki Gonzalez said. “Her wanting to do that, that has been a huge, huge, huge component to her competitive nature.”

The gutters in the Carneys’ backyard are filled with dents. The wood trim along parts of the house has missing chunks, and some of the fence panels are cracked or blown out. One time, after a hailstorm swept through the McKinney, Texas area, Kelly and Drue tried to convince their insurance agent that the dents were from hail, not lacrosse target practice.

Growing up, Carney and her brother AJ would play a game called “make-it-your-goalie,” where one person would “rip shots” with a tennis ball while the other played goalie without pads, Carney said. She joked that all those years playing goalie against AJ — two years older than her — must make her a half-decent goaltender, even today.

At times, Carney and AJ’s one-on-ones would get too heated, and Drue would intervene. The two were

always looking to “get under one another’s skin,” their dad said. Carney refused to play on the same team as her brother but still followed AJ’s footsteps. Because of his influence, she fell in love with lacrosse.

“First, she wanted to be just like AJ, and then she just wanted to beat him,” Drue said.

When AJ wasn’t around, Carney honed her passing and shooting skills on a bounce back, a rebounding contraption, in her backyard. During high school, that meant after classes, after practice or late at night under the backyard spotlight. Now, every time she goes home for break, the rebounder returns to the backyard from its storage spot in the garage.

Carney’s current bounce back is her third. The net didn’t tear on the first two, but they were so worn out and weathered they had to be replaced.

The first rebounder made a loud thumping sound when the ball hit it, one that disturbed Drue because he worked from home. And because his office’s wall was right behind the bounce back, the loud noise when Carney hit the nearby fences and walls only made matters worse.

“If we hit that fence, you knew he was coming,” Carney said. “And we were like, ‘Sorry, Dad, it was my left hand, I’m sorry.’ He would just get mad and say, ‘Don’t hit the fence, you’re supposed to hit the goal.’”

During the spring of 2017, Carney, then a junior, quarterbacked her team in John Paul II (Texas) High School’s annual powderpuff football game. She threw multiple touchdown passes and on one running play pulled off a spin move that threw off a defender and tore their ACL. Carney’s performance left some of the

see carney page 14

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ALWAYS

AN ANSWER

12 lacrosse guide 2020

Two ACL tears threatened Brett Kennedy’s lacrosse career.

Instead, he became an All-American.

Story by Andrew Crane asst. sports editor

Photo by Elizabeth Billman

B asst. photo editor

RETT KENNEDY DIDN’T REALIZE IN THE MOMENT HIS RIGHT KNEE HAD POPPED. He planted and pivoted his foot at midfield — a clearing-attempt dodge — but then crumbled to the ground.

There was no contact. It was something Kennedy had done countless times leading up to that point in his junior season.

Maybe it was Essex County’s Watsessing Park’s field, which his father, former coaches and siblings compared to “concrete.” Kennedy had never been seriously injured before that April game against Glen Ridge. Yet, there lay Ridgewood (New Jersey) High School’s defensive leader on the hard field. His uncle and mother sprinted out with trainers from both schools. Tom, his father, was stuck in New York City’s Holland Tunnel, desperately trying to weave his Chevy Suburban and get to Watsessing Park when his wife called.

“I’ve like really never gotten hurt before that, so I didn’t really know what to expect,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy eventually hobbled over to the sideline on crutches. The Glen Ridge trainer said it wasn’t an ACL tear, but the knee continued to swell. By the next morning, Kennedy didn’t believe the trainer.

It had to be an ACL tear or something worse than the initial diagnosis. Everything Kennedy would later become known for with the Orange — his speed, his aggressiveness — was jeopardized in that moment.

The same would happen again after his second ACL tear less than two years later, prolonging the progress made at long pole in his final year at Ridgewood and preventing him from reaching the field during his freshman year at Syracuse. As a redshirt junior longstick midfielder with the Orange, Kennedy has shaken the injuries to become a defensive “terror,” as head coach John Desko calls him.

“That would’ve sunk most people,” NJ Riot club founder Lee Southren said. “If it sinks somebody on the first one, the second one really could’ve just basically had somebody think that their career’s over.”

••• Austin Fusco glanced up and saw space. A few seconds after Syracuse scored in the fourth quarter against then-No. 17 Johns Hopkins, the ball popped loose from the ensuing faceoff.

Kennedy sprinted toward the X but then peeled back and hovered. Blue Jays defender Jared Reinson pulled off to chase the ball, but Fusco arrived first. He lifted a pass to Kennedy, who took four steps, one skip and a shot from 20 yards out that ended in the eventual game-winning goal for SU. It was the loudest Peter Dearth said he’d ever heard the Carrier Dome. Kennedy jumped into Nate Solomon’s arms. This was just Kennedy’s fourth goal with Syracuse, but he channeled the offensive skills

remaining from his childhood, when he was an offensive midfielder first learning the sport.

“They used to call him ‘Brett the Jet,’” Southren said. “He was like a jet plane. You would fire him up, and he would just start running all over the field.”

In the backyard of their Ridgewood home, Kennedy and his two brothers, Thomas and Jack, would sprint out to the lacrosse net nestled on their paved basketball court. They’d select a goalie and pepper tennis balls toward the net. Sometimes they’d miss and break a basement window, other times they’d go one-on-one and practice dodges.

When he started high school, though, Kennedy switched to long pole. It played right into his physicality, a perfect fit for the “hyper-active kid,” his uncle and brother agreed. There were still offensive flashes, like in a Braveheart overtime, when Kennedy won the one-on-one battle and scored the gamewinner at a North Carolina tournament.

But defense became his specialty. Shortly after Kennedy tore his ACL for the first time, defensive coach Sean Kelly left Don Bosco Prep and joined the Ridgewood staff. He studied film on every player leading into the summer, including Kennedy. His potential didn’t need uncovering, just fine-tuning: on-ball defense, point of attack — little things that needed to become muscle-memory before Syracuse.

Still, Kennedy couldn’t start right away. He was on crutches. In between his physical therapy sessions at Excel Training, Kennedy and Kelly talked on the sideline at practices and tournaments. For Kennedy’s

see kennedy page 14

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Story by Alex Hamer staff writer

Photo by Molly Gibbs

A

senior staff photographer

LONG THE SIDELINE AT THE LAX FOR THE CURE TOURNAMENT, BUTCH MARINO AND SARAH COOPER COULDN’T DECIPHER THE OFFENSE ON THE FIELD. It was the summer of 2015 in New Egypt, New Jersey, and college coaches packed the stands scouting the country’s best club teams.

Marino’s TLC Red team had already won its semifinal earlier in the day and was looking to scout potential championship opponents. The Long Island Yellow Jackets, running a similar backer zone that Marino’s team deployed, neared an upset by the Hero’s Tournament Lacrosse Club.

Marino, a member of the 1994 gold-medal U.S. men’s lacrosse team, couldn’t figure out how Hero’s was beating the Yellow Jacket zone. Yet Cooper, his zone backer, saw what her head coach couldn’t. “[Cooper] said, ‘Hey, Coach Butch, do you see Hero’s? Every time they’re on offense, every single time, they’re skipping the second pass,’” Marino remembered. “Which is smart: ball movement is the key to beating a backer zone.”

Rather than make the simple pass to the closest teammate, Hero’s would use that attack as a dummy — launching the ball over the decoy to another attack — and make it an almost-impossible amount of ground for the backer to cover. In TLC’s championship victory that same day, Cooper led a defense that Marino said “rocked” Hero’s, holding them to just one goal.

“All you,” Marino said to her after the game. “That was all you.”

It’s Cooper’s mental ability to read the game and make changes “on the fly” that made her the top defensive recruit in her class, head coach Gary Gait said. She caused a team-high 33 turnovers despite being the only first-year starter on defense and enters 2020 as the reigning ACC freshman of the year. But if Cooper and the Orange want to achieve their national championship goal, she knows she’ll have to take her game to another level. Still, it wouldn’t be Cooper’s first time making a sophomore surge.

Six years ago, Cooper emerged from the shower in her Lutherville, Maryland home and saw the email she had been waiting for. It was from her high school — the

Catholic, all-girls Notre Dame Preparatory School — announcing who had made the varsity and junior varsity rosters.

Then-freshman Cooper quickly scrolled through the varsity roster, scanning for her name. It wasn’t there. When she found her name on the JV list, she wasn’t upset for long.

“I never try to be super hard on myself,” Cooper said, “because that’s when I get too nervous and make a mistake or not play how I want to play because I’m putting too much stress on myself.”

ND Prep head coach Mac Ford admitted it was a mistake to omit Cooper from the varsity team that year, but he and Cooper agree that a year on JV aided her development. While several of Cooper’s freshman friends languished on the 46-girl varsity team without much playing time, Cooper excelled.

Her calm approach is somewhat famous in the Syracuse locker room, and she admits teammates have caught her dozing off before games. Cooper dislikes music with beats that pump up other players, instead opting for slower songs that clear her mind.

It’s a balancing act for Cooper, who admits her humble and “unassuming” demeanor, as Ford puts it, has sometimes led her to be overly tentative on the field. In her sophomore year at Notre Dame, Ford rectified his error from the prior year, making Cooper an immediate varsity starter.

At first, Cooper was nervous. She ran away when she thought someone was about to throw her a pass.

Even though she displayed superb skills in practice, Cooper preferred to fade out of the spotlight and into the background during games. One day, Ford had seen enough and pulled her aside.

VISION

COACH’S

Strong lacrosse IQ shaped the defensive game Sarah Cooper has brought to Syracuse

lacrosse guide 2020 13

“Hey, you have as good of stickwork as anybody. You should be handling the ball and clearing the ball by yourself,” Ford said to her.

“And all of a sudden, everything clicked for her,” he said.

Cooper, whom Ford tabbed the “consummate teammate,” said she realized her hesitancy was harming her team, which was the last thing she wanted.

From then on, Cooper played with the poise of a veteran, making suggestions to the Notre Dame coaching staff just like she had with Marino at the Lax for the Cure tournament.

During Cooper’s junior year, Notre Dame was down big to Bishop Ireton (Virginia) High School and Lexi LeDoyen, now one of Cooper’s roommates at SU. When Cooper subbed out, she told Ford and the coaching staff they needed to switch from zone to man-to-man. Cooper said she had just gotten a feeling it would work, and as Ford recalls, she took LeDoyen in man and shut her down.

“She would always make the right call,” Ford said.

“She was like our coach on the field.”

Part of Cooper’s advanced mental abilities comes from her relentless approach. Marino recalled taking his daughter Alex — Cooper’s current teammate and roommate — to St. Paul’s Prep School in Brooklandville, Maryland on days TLC didn’t have practice.

Often when they arrived, Cooper was already there, working on her game alone with the goals that were up year-round. Before she had her driver’s license, Cooper begged her parents to take her to practice an hour early.

Cooper said there were times this past fall when she’d see cooper page 14

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14 lacrosse guide 2020

from page 10

dordevic was the right decision. Dordevic couldn’t continue to play on a broken foot like he did his entire freshman year.

It was difficult to commit to that second surgery days before his sophomore season, but Dordevic’s past recoveries ensured Dean that his son wouldn’t stop working. During a high school game, Dordevic was struck in the chin by an opponent’s stick and blood spurt everywhere as a gash opened up. Dean was sitting in the stands beside a family friend, an emergency room doctor, who went down to the field during halftime.

“Sew me up,” Dordevic said. Without an anesthetic, the doctor stitched his chin before Dordevic went back onto the field to play the second half.

“He’s the kind of person who puts a belt in his mouth, gets on the field, plays and doesn’t complain,” Dean said. from page 12

kennedy defense inside the 10-yard line to become consistent for longer than a few minutes, his stick needed to initiate contact from his hands. He couldn’t react to the attackmen and midfielders. He needed to dictate them.

As Kennedy’s senior season neared, they used the umbrella drill to hone defensive approaches and break-downs from the left, top left, center, top right and right side of the net. Every angle needed to be closed off against top attackmen, Kelly told him. His instincts within the restraining box were sound, and now a complete defensive game formed.

“The one-on-one is a violent confrontation,” Kelly said, “and if you watch Brett play, Brett plays violently and he plays full speed.”

Kelly and Ridgewood head coach Mike Pounds helped turn Brett into the player that was second on the Orange with 42 ground balls and earned All-ACC honors during his redshirt freshman year in 2018. That came one year after Kennedy had suffered his secfrom page 11

carney guys on the football team asking if they could recruit her, history teacher and high school mentor Ashley McMurtry said.

“I’ve never seen a kid, let alone a young woman, destroy opposition the way that she did,” McMurtry said.

Because John Paul II didn’t have a girls’ lacrosse program, Carney played club lacrosse for GRIT Dallas and high school volleyball during the fall. After volleyball practices, she’d change clothes and eat in the car on her way to club lacrosse practice.

The day after Dordevic re-injured his foot, he came out of the training room and Syracuse’s former offensive coordinator, Kevin Donahue, pulled him aside. He needed to look at the offense as a coach would, Donahue told him, inspecting each puzzle piece individually.

Dordevic learned not to “give a crap about the guy with the ball.” He learned to view the game from a 30,000-foot point of view, his father said. Dordevic used last season to take his game to the next level — a level above 15 games started, 15 goals and 5 assists as a freshman. He learned that beating his man doesn’t necessarily mean he had the best shot. In the offseason, Syracuse installed a new offense under Pat March, and Dordevic feels like he knows it better than the old one.

Throughout his recovery process, Dordevic and athletic trainer Troy Gerlt didn’t look at his recovery as getting back to 100%. It was a series of milestones. First, he could hobble around the house. Two weeks later, he could walk on crutches. Then one crutch, then on an

underwater treadmill. Finally, Dordevic was in a boot for two weeks before returning to shoes.

Coaches used Dordevic to motivate the rest of the team, Gerlt said. The trainer said everybody in the Syracuse facility probably knows Dordevic — the guy who spent countless hours parking his scooter and throwing a lacrosse ball against the wall.

“I was away from it so long I kind of felt like I was caged,” Dordevic said. “I was almost like a caged animal.”

Dordevic gained more than 15 pounds of muscle and will play on the man-up unit this year, something rarely done by righties, he said. In his freshman season, Dordevic sparsely went to his left hand, assuming Division I defenders would exploit his offhand. After a season of southpaw wall ball, he doesn’t care which hand he uses.

In mid-August, Gerlt drove Dordevic to a foot specialist. He knew what they were going for, but getting cleared completely still hadn’t sunk in. After the appointment, Dordevic

started to cry, just like he did in the Carrier Dome locker room six months earlier.

After a full calendar year between initial surgery and being cleared, Dordevic was back.

Again. He wanted any opportunity to get back on the field with his teammates. In the fall, he was rushing in practice and going too hard in scrimmages, he said. SU head coach John Desko could tell how anxious the redshirt sophomore was.

The first day back from winter break in January of 2020, Dordevic was excited for something as trivial as the team’s run test. It was a new version, and Dordevic knew he was in shape despite nerves. But as he ran backand-forth, planting on his foot and reaching down to touch the lines, Dordevic was just grateful to be out there.

“People have it way worse than me breaking my foot,” Dordevic said. “I used that almost as motivation, but more ...” He paused.

“Thankfulness.”

ond ACL tear on the same knee during SU’s annual alumni scrimmage, though.

In that Sept. 2016 exhibition, Kennedy again came across the middle of the field, tracking Sergio Salcido, he said. This time, Kennedy knew it was the ACL when he fell. Tom and Kennedy’s uncle Bernie Jensen, sitting in the Carrier Dome stands, feared that too. And trainer Troy Gerlt confirmed it less than a half hour after the scrimmage ended.

“When he gets beat, it doesn’t affect him,” Kelly said. “When he tears his leg, it doesn’t affect him. When he tears his knee the second time, it doesn’t affect him.”

After the first tear near midfield against Glen Ridge, Kennedy and his family went to Kennedy Fried Chicken across the street following the game. Swelling had worsened by that point, and it would swell even more when they got home. The second time, when Kennedy and his family went to dinner at the then-Genesee Grande Hotel’s Salt Restaurant & Bar, there was no uncertainty. Later that evening, Kennedy’s phone lit up with a text from Kelly asking how he felt. “Bummed,”

Kennedy responded.

“Let’s give it 24-48 hours, feel sorry about yourself and then on Monday we start recovering,” Kelly chimed back. “I can’t wait to read about your comeback story. I can’t wait to watch you play next spring.”

For the next six months, Kennedy spent his days with Gerlt in the Manley Field House training room, slowly progressing from simple bends and stretches that defined the first two weeks. Gerlt eventually cleared him for jogs and sprints.

An injury to Tyson Bomberry during 2018 against Albany gave Kennedy his first chance in the Orange’s lineup a week later. He initially started at close defense, not the position he was recruited for, but created two Army turnovers and picked up five ground balls.

In Charlottesville, Virginia the following game, Kennedy broke out with two consecutive goals, the first coming when he sprinted for 40 yards down the field before finishing just outside the crease. The next came in transition, converting a pass from Dearth and pumping his fist as soon as the ball sunk into the net.

“Everyone started to say, ‘Who the hell is this kid?’” Thomas, his older brother, said.

Even as Kennedy became an All-American, texts still come from Kelly. “Spot checks,” he calls them. They’ll come at 4 a.m. (You’re probably sleeping and being lazy. I’m doing pushups, what’re you doing?). They’ll buzz Kennedy’s phone after games (Love that they had you and Fernandez on the wing together.). Kelly doesn’t let up, even at random times during the summer.

“Dog days and humid, lots of excuses,” one text read. “What are you doing to get better?

Don’t let the voices in your head talk you into taking the path of least resistance. First-team All-American and national championship are year-long jobs. The weak will always hate the strong, stay savage.”

“Working out right now,” Kennedy typed after waking up in the morning to one of Kelly’s early-hour messages. “Got my number up to 265, 12 reps, pretty pumped,” he responded in August, during his second-straight fully healthy offseason.

Kennedy always has an answer.

By then, Carney was playing only against girls. She verbally committed to Syracuse her sophomore year, in which she recorded the third-most points last year as a freshman. She dons Gait’s No. 22 jersey, and was also part of the U.S. women’s U19 lacrosse team that won gold at the 2019 World Championships.

This season, the Orange will rely on her competitor’s mindset as they look to win their first NCAA Tournament.

Now, though, there won’t be any boys whining about her aggression.

“I think she plays like a very skilled player,” Gait said, “no matter the gender.” rferna04@syr.edu | @roshan_f16

mbannon@syr.edu | @MitchBannon

arcrane@syr.edu | @CraneAndrew

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cooper forget they had off days. She’d follow her normal routine, waking up early to be at the facility an hour before non-existent 8 a.m. practices.

“I’d be looking around like, I have the first [parking] spot at Manley, this is awesome,” Cooper said. “And then I’d be like, ‘Oh, we don’t have practice today.’”

Even when she remembers it’s an off day,

Cooper can’t stay away from lacrosse completely. Sometimes, she’ll ask a teammate to go and work out or play wall ball. Last fall, when each player was sent their login to SU’s new film system, Cooper immediately signed in and began scouting the upcoming season’s opponents. She sifted through the different offenses, the attack players. The games were still months away, but that didn’t mean Cooper couldn’t start. athamer@syr.edu | @alexhamer8

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