Syracuse men’s lacrosse: One big step back up the mountain in 2025

It ended with a thud, but the Orange accomplished a lot and did what needed to be done in a great campaign.

One year ago, Syracuse Orange fans were lamenting the team’s disappointing ending to the 2024 season, one step shy of the Final Four in a lackluster loss to Denver in the NCAA quarterfinals.

In the aftermath of that loss, the message across the Syracuse spectrum seemed to be the same; that the expectation was the Orange should make their long awaited return to Memorial Day weekend the next season.

And so it was, as ‘Cuse finally got over their quarterfinal hump to make it back to Championship Weekend for the first time in 12 years.

That trip ultimately fell flat in a disastrous, 14-8 loss to Maryland, but it was a crucial step in the larger picture of Syracuse lacrosse.

After trailing off in the final years of the John Desko era, Gary Gait’s tenure has yielded quite the opposite results. The Orange have improved their standing every year under Gait, going from 4-10, to 8-7, to 12-6 and the NCAA quarterfinals and now 13-6 and the semifinals.

There have been plenty of inconsistencies and questions along the way, but the bottom line reads that SU has improved its positioning in each of Gait’s first four years at the helm. That’s more than notable, especially during a time when its never been harder to scale your way back up the mountain of the Division I landscape.

Appropriately enough, Gait’s fourth season ended at the hands of the Maryland Terrapins, the current standard bearer in the sport for consistent success. Having made the Final Four in 11 of John Tillman’s 14 seasons (excluding 2020 season, no tournament), the Terps are the contemporary version of ‘Cuse’s 22 straight appearances from 1983-2004.

And that’s exactly how the game played out in a matchup of one team with tons of postseason experience and one with very little, and none on the season’s final weekend, as Gait pointed out postgame:

“They executed like a team that’s been to a dozen Final Fours in the last, what, 14 years, 15 years, something like that. Lots of experience, and the execution was outstanding. Unfortunately, we came in, we played the first half like it was the first time we’ve been here in 12 years.”

It was ugly in the end, but there’s a lot to celebrate about the Orange’s 2025 season. First Final Four since 2013. First ACC Tournament title since 2016. Two wins over Notre Dame. Two crazy NCAA Tournament wins over Harvard and Princeton. A response to a terrible April swoon with an incredible run through May.

All of it points to a more mature team on the rise that has figured out how to fight back against adversity and overcome hurdles. A lot of what they accomplished this season would have been impossible for the 2024 or 2023 Orange. But the 2025 Orange only accomplished what they did because of the growing pains of the previous years.

It’s all part of the journey back up, and a big part of that journey is gaining experience along the way. It’s very hard to get the chip without getting close enough to taste it first. That’s exactly what happened for Cornell this year, as CJ Kirst and his fellow seniors were freshmen on the 2022 Big Red team that lost to Maryland in that title game.

The Orange needed to get to the final weekend to get a sense of it, to truly understand just how badly they want to get back to give themselves another shot at the season’s final day.

After being away for so many years, a team of ‘Cuse players finally gained that critical Final Four experience. And now that they’ve got it, you know they want more.

“I think this year we made the first step, and that was getting here. I can tell you — go into that locker room, the guys aren’t happy just getting here. They wanted to have a chance to play on Memorial Day,” Gait said on Saturday. “…So I know they will put their foot down and say, ‘We are going to commit even more to this team to make sure that we get to the final and we get a chance to win a National Championship.’ I know that they are going to be one of the most committed teams in the entire country to get that done.”

If you can believe it, the class that has led the charge back up is already at their senior year. They’ve got one more chance to play on Memorial Day and lead the Orange back to the mountain top.

They’ve already done so much, from 4-10 the year before they arrived to Championship Weekend in a span of three seasons. But there’s only one thing left on the minds of the people in that locker room as they look towards the future. Gait knows the deal:

“We were not there this year, but we’ll be back.”