Syracuse Lacrosse: In Pursuit of a Three-Peat

This season, the Syracuse Orange lacrosse team is in pursuit of a rare feat: they are chasing down a three-peat. This incredible sports feat, although not entirely uncommon in Men’s college lacrosse, was last achieved by Princeton in the '96-'98 seasons.

If they achieve this milestone, that title will give them 11 national championships, two more than any other school.

Let me take you back a year and change ago, to Boston in May.

It's Memorial Day, May 25th, and the defending champion Syracuse Orange are facing a team that resides in the Orange’s own backyard, Cornell. The Orange trailed most of this game, and to most it would seem that the game was lost.

What many Syracuse fans knew, and what gave them hope, was the fact that Cody Jamieson was on the field. This young man, a two-time national champion on the JuCo level that hailed from the Six-Nation reservation, was a stellar athlete and one of, if not the best talent, in the country at attack.

Little was known outside of Orange Nation about this talent. The NCAA clearinghouse had not granted Jamieson waivers to play until the very end of the regular season. Unfair in the eyes of many, coach Desko was just happy to have him for the final stretch of the season; he was a shot in the arm going into the tournament.

Late in the fourth quarter with the Orange trailing 9-6, they rallied and trimmed the deficit to one. With 2:46 left the Orange were pressuring hard, and the game felt like a totally different ballgame. The next two minutes and the following overtime were perhaps in, my opinion, the best lacrosse I have seen in my 24 years on this earth.

The Orange’s Kenny Nims was able to dislodge the ball from Cornell’s Matt Moyer, and Steven Keogh recovered the subsequent ground ball. This started an unsettled situation where Keough took a wild shot which was somehow caught by Matt Abbott.

The series that happened next I have never before had the good fortune of seeing on a lacrosse field.

Blindsided by two Cornell defenders, Abbott fired off a behind the back a no-look pass to seemingly no one, but what Matt saw that many of us couldn’t. It was a streaking Kenny Nims on a warpath to the crease.

Abbott's pass miraculously found the back of Nims’s pocket and Nims fired a shot at the waiting Cornell goalie. The ball found the back of the net. It was a goal in the waning seconds of the championship game.

Not just any goal, but a goal to force sudden death overtime.

Now if you aren’t a sports fan and don’t know what sudden death overtime is, I will take this moment to explain.

Sudden death overtime is the most exciting extra period in all of sports, especially in lacrosse. In all sudden death overtimes, the game is decided by the first person to score a goal. Simple enough and heartbreaking for the team that doesn’t win he coin toss, BUT in lacrosse there is one important difference.

There is no coin toss: the game is started by a face-off, which means that both teams have an equal opportunity at retaining the first possession of the overtime period. This is the great leveler of lacrosse, after every goal it is any team’s ball; you have to fight for every possession you get; there are no gifts in lacrosse.

It didn’t look good for SU, they lost the opening face-off of the extra period. Cornell was running down field; in their minds, they saw visions of hoisting the championship trophy.

However, Syracuse would not relent. Sid Smith, childhood friend of Cody Jamieson, knocked the ball loose from the Cornell midfielder. Dan Hardy, another of Syracuse’s stellar midfielders, brought the ball up field, faked a shot, and dished a perfect pass to a waiting Cody Jamieson, who, with a head-fake, deposited the ball in the back of the net.

This year is a whole different story.

Although we have some incredible talent returning along with a two going into three-year starting goalie, Syracuse has lots to prove this season.

Syracuse is no longer the Notre Dame of Lacrosse. This is the first year that the Orange is affiliated with a conference, and what other conference would they be in besides the Big East?

The Orange were the clear favorites starting the season this year, but after losing to Virginia at Virginia, Syracuse has shown that they have flaws. Virginia, our perennial nemesis on the turf have usurped Cuse’s No. 1 position.

The Orange will fight them tooth and nail to reclaim it, and if they have a fraction of the magic that they conjured during last year's championship game, they just might be able to reclaim that spot and hoist the championship trophy for a third straight year.