LI's Conner Garzone stars as Tufts men's lacrosse wins D-III national title
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — It wasn’t just an undefeated season that ended with a resounding victory for Tufts in Sunday’s NCAA Division III men’s lacrosse championship at Gillette Stadium. It was also the end of an era.
The Conner Garzone Era.
The fifth-year graduate student out of Chaminade has started every game in goal the last four years for the Jumbos, led them to back-to-back titles and became the mainstay of a program that has seen consistent success during his tenure. His nine saves in the 28-5 victory over Dickinson, the final of his career, gave him a record of 81-7 as a starter and he hasn’t lost a game since last April, a string of 28 straight.
“I tried to be not just the best player I could be every day but the best person, the best leader I could be,” the Malverne native said. “The guys around me, defense and coaches, the people who trust in me, they make it a lot easier. I’ve had up-and-down games throughout my career and they have stuck with me for four straight years. I’m pretty lucky to have people around me who believe in me to that extent.
“I hope I left [the program] cleaner than I found it and I hope the alumni and the people on this team are proud of me and this team’s accomplishments.”
Garzone may have started 88 straight games, but he didn’t finish this one. With the score as lopsided as it was, he was pulled in the third quarter to get a jump on the celebrations. While he played well, Tufts scored more goals than any team ever had in a championship game in any division.
Senior defender George Panagopoulos (Deerfield Academy/Old Brookville) had three ground balls and added an early assist to the Tufts scoring. Tufts also got a goal and an assist from a familiar face around Gillette Stadium: senior attacker Joey Kraft, grandson of Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Garzone said it was “surreal” to think about the team’s long winning streak.
“You never really think of it as an undefeated season because you are trying to just take it in and just building it day by day,” he said. “You are not really looking at the big picture all the time. But it’s pretty special.”
That’s how Garzone will remember it . . . and how he will be remembered, too.
“When you go into a game you are always thinking about the unknowns and if things go sideways what are we going to do, what are the contingency plans,” Tufts head coach Casey D’Annolfo said. “Very rarely do we ever have to worry about Conner. When you get that for four years, when you can say, ‘Well, we have Garzone back there, that’s going to be a really strong positive for us,’ it’s unbelievable. It gives you a sense of calm, a sense of confidence. The defense feeds off that and the team feeds off that.
“We’re going to miss him a lot back there.”
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.
