By Monday, all three national championship trophies could be making their way back to three schools separated by about 25 miles. And now, with lacrosse at an all-time high in popularity, the trifecta would bring the game back to one of its birthplaces.
Video Interviews: Le Moyne's Brian Welch | Cortland's Cody Hoyt and Connor Duffy | Tewaaraton Finalists, Including Syracuse's Matt Abbott
Theirs is the land of forever hills and tireless clouds, of a winter that arrives always too early and lasts far too long, of cornfields and trees and rust-wrapped mills. Onondaga and Cortland Counties are places famous for their natural beauty - sitting, as they do, on the northeast tip of the Finger Lakes region - but, like the rest of Upstate, routinely abused by outsiders, including their downstate neighbors in The City.
Said American singer Connie Francis: "There are some cities that I did take time out to study, because I love history and one of them was Boston, and of course Rome and all of those places like that. But, in Syracuse or Rochester, or any of those places, no."
Three hundred miles from Boston, with just three games remaining in the NCAA men's lacrosse season, this place has also become perhaps the most fertile land in lacrosse.
With defending D-I champ Syracuse at the center, the possibility exists that all three national championship trophies will make their way back to one 25-mile stretch in Central New York. On Sunday, in the D-II final, it'll be Le Moyne (located in Syracuse) playing for its third crown in four years, with Cortland State out for its second D-III crown in four years. And in Monday's D-I final, Syracuse takes on Cornell, a team a little outside the immediate region, but just over 50 miles from the Carrier Dome.
Video Interviews: Le Moyne's Brian Welch | Cortland's Cody Hoyt and Connor Duffy | Tewaaraton Finalists, Including Syracuse's Matt Abbott
Theirs is the land of forever hills and tireless clouds, of a winter that arrives always too early and lasts far too long, of cornfields and trees and rust-wrapped mills. Onondaga and Cortland Counties are places famous for their natural beauty - sitting, as they do, on the northeast tip of the Finger Lakes region - but, like the rest of Upstate, routinely abused by outsiders, including their downstate neighbors in The City.
Said American singer Connie Francis: "There are some cities that I did take time out to study, because I love history and one of them was Boston, and of course Rome and all of those places like that. But, in Syracuse or Rochester, or any of those places, no."
Three hundred miles from Boston, with just three games remaining in the NCAA men's lacrosse season, this place has also become perhaps the most fertile land in lacrosse.
With defending D-I champ Syracuse at the center, the possibility exists that all three national championship trophies will make their way back to one 25-mile stretch in Central New York. On Sunday, in the D-II final, it'll be Le Moyne (located in Syracuse) playing for its third crown in four years, with Cortland State out for its second D-III crown in four years. And in Monday's D-I final, Syracuse takes on Cornell, a team a little outside the immediate region, but just over 50 miles from the Carrier Dome.
"[Lacrosse] is spreading out, definitely, but if you know anything
about lacrosse, there are two hotbeds - Long Island and central New
York," said Le Moyne midfielder Brian Welch.
The three teams all advanced to the finals last year, but only one, the Orange, brought any hardware back. Le Moyne, who fell to NYIT, and Cortland, who fell to perennial championship game nemesis Salisbury, left only with frustration. So, with both Le Moyne and Cortland both coming into Sunday as higher seeds, optimism abounds.
Two teams from the region have already clinched titles, with the Onondaga Community College men's and women's teams taking junior college national championships two weeks ago. If the three teams in Foxborough win, it would be the seventh combined national title in the last 12 possible NCAA championships. So, Syracuse assistant coach Roy Simmons III said, the region's buzzing with excitement for three teams that are composed of players entirely from that 25-mile halo.
"We're all about Upstate," said Syracuse coach ROY Simmons III. "We're really excited about upstate, Cortland, Le Moyne, everybody's represented. And OCC really set the table."
It hasn't always been this way.
Syracuse, one of the top teams all-time in D-I lacrosse, has historically dotted the championship radar - the Orange have won six of the last 16 titles, too. But the others are relatively new: LeMoyne, although it's won three times in the past five years, didn't win a title before 2004. Cortland State, the runner-up in the past two seasons to Salisbury after a title in 2006, never won before '06.
The tendency reflects not only the growth of lacrosse (there's no need to import players from outside the region - all but a few members of the Le Moyne squad are within and hour and a half), but of the bounding improvement of D-II and D-III, attracting players from the area to schools like LeMoyne and Cortland instead of losing those players to lower-level D-I schools.
"Lacrosse is growing everywhere, especially Upstate," said Cortland State defenseman Cody Hoyt.
"It's huge Upstate," echoed Cortland midfielder Connor Duffy. "It's just a big area for lacrosse - that's why you've got so many guys from those teams playing here now."
So to win all three trophies isn't necessarily about respect, per se. But it is about pride.
This is, after all, one of American lacrosse's true birthplaces. The region's name refers to the Onondaga Nation, part of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy - one of the groups to first bring the game to the Upstate area. The Iroquois nation still fields a team, The Iroquois Nationals, who compete internationally; the Onondaga field their own team, too - The Redhawks.
In his Lacrosse: A History of the Game, Donald Fisher tells a story of Frederic Wyatt, the Union College coach in 1948, who, faced with the problem of lackluster-quality sticks made by non-Natives, told area coaches to buy them directly from the Onondaga and Saint Regis Reservations. Almost 60 years later, a member of the Onondaga nation, Brett Bucktooth, captained Syracuse in 2006.
So the return of power to the region isn't anything surprising. But it is something, the teams all said, worth celebrating.
Said Simmons: "Everybody's got that big dream that we can take the whole thing back to Central New York."
The three teams all advanced to the finals last year, but only one, the Orange, brought any hardware back. Le Moyne, who fell to NYIT, and Cortland, who fell to perennial championship game nemesis Salisbury, left only with frustration. So, with both Le Moyne and Cortland both coming into Sunday as higher seeds, optimism abounds.
Two teams from the region have already clinched titles, with the Onondaga Community College men's and women's teams taking junior college national championships two weeks ago. If the three teams in Foxborough win, it would be the seventh combined national title in the last 12 possible NCAA championships. So, Syracuse assistant coach Roy Simmons III said, the region's buzzing with excitement for three teams that are composed of players entirely from that 25-mile halo.
"We're all about Upstate," said Syracuse coach ROY Simmons III. "We're really excited about upstate, Cortland, Le Moyne, everybody's represented. And OCC really set the table."
It hasn't always been this way.
Syracuse, one of the top teams all-time in D-I lacrosse, has historically dotted the championship radar - the Orange have won six of the last 16 titles, too. But the others are relatively new: LeMoyne, although it's won three times in the past five years, didn't win a title before 2004. Cortland State, the runner-up in the past two seasons to Salisbury after a title in 2006, never won before '06.
The tendency reflects not only the growth of lacrosse (there's no need to import players from outside the region - all but a few members of the Le Moyne squad are within and hour and a half), but of the bounding improvement of D-II and D-III, attracting players from the area to schools like LeMoyne and Cortland instead of losing those players to lower-level D-I schools.
"Lacrosse is growing everywhere, especially Upstate," said Cortland State defenseman Cody Hoyt.
"It's huge Upstate," echoed Cortland midfielder Connor Duffy. "It's just a big area for lacrosse - that's why you've got so many guys from those teams playing here now."
So to win all three trophies isn't necessarily about respect, per se. But it is about pride.
This is, after all, one of American lacrosse's true birthplaces. The region's name refers to the Onondaga Nation, part of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy - one of the groups to first bring the game to the Upstate area. The Iroquois nation still fields a team, The Iroquois Nationals, who compete internationally; the Onondaga field their own team, too - The Redhawks.
In his Lacrosse: A History of the Game, Donald Fisher tells a story of Frederic Wyatt, the Union College coach in 1948, who, faced with the problem of lackluster-quality sticks made by non-Natives, told area coaches to buy them directly from the Onondaga and Saint Regis Reservations. Almost 60 years later, a member of the Onondaga nation, Brett Bucktooth, captained Syracuse in 2006.
So the return of power to the region isn't anything surprising. But it is something, the teams all said, worth celebrating.
Said Simmons: "Everybody's got that big dream that we can take the whole thing back to Central New York."
Leave a comment