Cornell men's lacrosse team wins national title behind CJ Kirst's huge game

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — After CJ Kirst, the leading goal-scorer in NCAA history, was held without a goal for Cornell in the semifinal round of the Division I men’s lacrosse tournament on Saturday, he was asked how he felt about it.

“I feel great!” he exclaimed.

Imagine his exhilaration, then, after scoring six times — all in the last 31:49 of the game — in Cornell’s 13-10 win over Maryland in the championship game on Monday at Gillette Stadium as the Big Red earned their first title in 48 years.

After etching his name alongside the greats of program history such as Eamon McEneaney and Mike French. After tying the Division I single-season goal-scoring record with 82 this year, the last of them an open-netter with 50 seconds remaining that he tossed into the goal as casually as he did with the cage in his backyard while growing up in New Jersey.

“It was just a big day for Big Red,” the graduating senior said with a smile.

And its biggest star rose to the occasion.

It took a little coaxing. During the break between the first and second quarters, with Kirst still scoreless, coach Connor Buczek pulled him aside and told him to “play your game” and “have some confidence.”

In other words, go win the darn game. And so he did.

“With those words of wisdom, I was able to do it,” Kirst said.

Plenty of players score plenty of goals in these tournaments, but few have resounded like the one that got Kirst off the schneid. It came with 1:49 remaining in the second quarter on an overhand bounce shot that was fired with the ferocity of so many Gronk spikes that this building has witnessed.

The Cornell stands, the bench and a half-century of students and alumni all erupted with palpable relief.

“We knew if 15 got going, we were going home with hardware,’’ Buczek said, “and by God if he didn’t find it and find it in a big way.”

Kirst scored the next three goals for Cornell throughout the third quarter, all unassisted. He assisted on one to Ryan Goldstein to start the fourth, then added two more in the final 6:42 to ice the game.

His fifth came after Maryland (14-4) scored two in a row to close to 10-9. Ghosts of Cornell heartbreaks past started to swirl around the field. Kirst exorcised them.

“He’s our leader,” long-stick middie Brendan Staub (Garden City) said. “He’s one of the best of all time. So when he settles into a game, it makes everyone else feel a lot more comfortable and gives us the confidence we need.”

Added senior midfielder Hugh Kelleher (MacArthur): “The momentum starts turning every time he gets the ball. It was great to see him today.”

Cornell (18-1) set a school record for wins. and was, in retrospect, an overtime loss to Penn State  in March away from posting a perfect season.

“They’ve been the best team all year and they showed it today,” Maryland coach (and Cornell grad) John Tillman said. “Hats off to Cornell. They are very worthy champions.”

Cornell was never able to truly pull away from Maryland (14-4), but never trailed in the game, either.

While Kirst awoke in time to carry Cornell to Championsville, there were others who contributed. Brian Luzzi (Bethpage) scored the opening goal for the Big Red on a lefty rip. Staub corralled several key ground balls in the fourth quarter as Maryland got sloppy in its clears. Freshman Michael Melkonian (South Side) won two very important faceoffs in the fourth quarter.

“Nerves of steel,” Buczek said of Melkonian, who, at 5-11 and 175 pounds, looks as if he is half the size of regular faceoff specialist Jack Cascadden (6-3, 220, from Garden City). “So much poise. He got that thing to open space. His ability to come in and spell Jack and win some big ones was massive to our success today.”

Those are the “hard hat” plays Cornell preaches, the ones that honor former midfielder George Boiardi, who was hit in the chest with a shot and died on the field in 2004. It was not lost on anyone that this championship came 21 years after his death, 21 having being Boiardi’s since-retired jersey number.

And before Kirst got going, it was 5-9 attacker Ryan Goldstein who was stoking the Cornell scoring. It took two generations of Goldsteins to bring the trophy back to Ithaca; Ryan’s father, Tim, was a star for Cornell out of Ward Melville in the 1987 and 1988 championship games that the Big Red lost. His mother, Tina, also played lacrosse for Cornell, and both are in the school’s athletic hall of fame.

“I’ve been going to Final Fours for as long as I can remember,” Ryan Goldstein said. “My dad is definitely fired up for this one. It’s a really special moment.”

Tillman said it was a “pick your poison” choice on how to defend Kirst and Goldstein. “One guy is the Player of the Year,” he said, “and the other guy down the road could be.”

Few programs have the kind of history Cornell does, but Monday was as much about the present as the past. It was about a group of players who came together for a common goal, a graduating class of seniors who lost in the title game to Maryland as freshmen and ended their careers by beating that same team.

“I didn’t know how it would feel, but it feels great,” said Kelleher, one of those who played his final college lacrosse game. “I’m just enjoying all of these moments. Enjoying this a lot.”

There were hat tips to the past, too. Kirst said he spent time this week thinking about Sewanhaka graduate McEneaney, the star of that 1977 team that won Cornell’s most recent title before this one and a hero who died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Buczek made several references to another Sewanhaka product, Richie Moran, who coached Cornell to its first three titles in the 1970s.

“Cornell is a special place and Coach Moran built an incredible program,” said Buczek, who played for the school in the 2010s. “We stand on the shoulders of giants. Everything he built we are fortunate enough to be the stewards of.”

Moran, who died in 2022, had a catchphrase he echoed so often that it became the title of his autobiography. “It’s great to be here,” he would say.

After 48 years of waiting, the new saying for Cornell should be: It’s great to be back.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.