An old sports adage states, “One game does not a season make.” But don’t let it fool you.
Don’t let Greg Cannella fool you either. Or Bill Schell, or Kevin Leveille, or Saturday’s hero, Jeff Zywicki. Don’t let any of them paint a picture for you of how truly important the game, and the win, was for them.
Because as great as they’ll all say it was, it was better.
Beating Syracuse, the defending National Champions, the premier lacrosse program of the last decade and one of the most prolific in college athletics, and a team they’ve lost to every year since 1981 not only made their season, it made their careers. And not only their careers, but those of each and every lacrosse player who has ever donned Maroon and White but couldn’t beat the boys in Orange.
April 26, 2003 is a day Minuteman lacrosse will never forget. Because for all the past UMass greats who could never do it – from Sal LoCascio to Mark Millon, Tim Soudan to Scott Hiller – there are now 34 players and four coaches who can all say they have.
“After the game, a lot of alumni came up to us,” Schell said. “One by one, they said to me, ‘That’s huge.’ They said to me, ‘I couldn’t do it,’ but this group right here, we did it. That’s something to be proud of.”
“For the alums, it means a lot to those guys, because they weren’t able to get it done,” Cannella said. “Those guys are thanking us, I’m one of them, and I’m thanking these guys too. It’s really important for the alums and our guys now to realize that we got it done. I think the faces on those guys outside – you don’t get a better feeling talking to people that care about the program.”
And maybe it wasn’t just that they won, but how they won that made the rainy afternoon all that much more significant. Four times in their 21 game losing streak to the ‘Cuse did the Minutemen lose by one goal, including a 1996 overtime heartbreaker at the Carrier Dome. So for Cannella, who had never won an overtime contest prior to Saturday, watching his team play its heart out for 59 minutes and 55 seconds only to see a Sean Lindsay goal negate their efforts and send the contest to overtime certainly brought the past to mind.
“Oh yeah [I was thinking about ’96],” he said. “In my mind, and in the back of every alum’s mind…we want to beat Syracuse. I hadn’t been able to do it in my playing career or coaching career.”
So when Zywicki slipped a shot past Syracuse keeper Jay Pfeifer and 2,500-plus came pouring on to Garber Field’s sopping-wet turf for a celebration over two decades in the making, it was more than just excitement. It was all the aforementioned Minuteman greats, past and present, and their families, friends and fans finally exercising 21 years worth of demons. It was about solidifying Amherst on the major college lacrosse map, and it was an obstacle overcome in the quest for a national title.
But more than anything else, it was about a team; 34 players and four coaches. UMass lacrosse nation is rejoicing because of what these young men accomplished, and rightfully so. They broke the streak that no one else could, and that is something that can never be taken from them.
