The Men’s Lacrosse Team Gets Its First Action in Alumni Classic

By Nick Dugan

For the first time since early May, the Carrier Dome was home to Syracuse lacrosse on Saturday. The 2016-17 Orange played in their first game action against a team of recent Syracuse lacrosse graduates, dating as far back as 2000. The Alumni All-Stars defeated the varsity squad 8-4, concluding the game after just three quarters of play.

Dylan Donahue (’16) opened the scoring for the All-Stars just six minutes into the contest. Over the next 15 minutes, however, Syracuse put together a three-goal run, receiving tallies from Matt Lane, Nate Solomon and freshman midfielder James Trimboli.

After the All-Stars evened the game with just four and a half minutes left in the second quarter, Brad Voigt quickly returned the favor, sending the Orange into the half with a 4-3 advantage. But, coming out of halftime, the All-Stars dominated, scoring five unanswered goals to finish off the scrimmage.

“[It’s] difficult to have this scrimmage at this time of year when we’ve really had only about a week and a half of practice, so it’s hard to get everything together” Desko said. “But some guys showed well in a game type situation.”

“We got a lot of new guys working in there, but I thought we looked good,” commented senior goalie Evan Molloy. “These guys aren’t necessarily experienced, but they haven’t played with the team for a long time, and I thought they did pretty well out there.”

One of those new guys, redshirt sophomore Marcus Cunningham, feels that the new faces on defense have the potential to make the team that much better.

“Both those guys are really hungry,” he said. “They’ve been in a position where they’ve seen guys play and they’ve been behind guys that have played … definitely facilitates some competition.”

All of the players brought up the importance of improvement and the motivation to work together as a team. But, so early in the season, some of the guys couldn’t help but have a little fun too.

“On the defensive end I was trash talking, chirping Randy Staats and Dylan Donahue,” he said. “But it’s great to see Mullins and Jay [McDermott] and all those guys, Derek DeJoe. It’s awesome.”

The Orange will be back in action when they head down to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to take part in the HEADstrong University City Classic on October 16.