Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part series chronicling the 2019 Cabrini Cavaliers men’s lacrosse team’s run to an NCAA Division III National Championship. For part one, click here.
The 2019 NCAA tournament had already been an eventful one for the Cabrini Cavaliers men’s lacrosse team. After cruising past DeSales in the first-round and overcoming a sluggish start to beat Springfield in the second, the Cavs had fallen behind York 5-1 at halftime of the quarter-finals.
After a thrilling fourth-quarter comeback, then-junior midfielder Mike Gerzabek scored a dramatic, game-winning goal in overtime to put Cabrini over the top. The Cavaliers were off to their first Final Four in men’s lacrosse, just the second all-time in school history (men’s basketball lost the national title game in 2012).
“From that moment on, when that goal went in in overtime, it felt like we broke through a glass window and we weren’t playing on house money the way we had been,” Cabrini’s head coach Steve Colfer said. “Guys kinda loosened up and there wasn’t as much of that nervousness around it.”
In many great sports movies, there is one team that serves as the central antagonist of the film. For the U.S. men’s ice hockey team in “Miracle” (2004) the equivalent squad from the Soviet Union was the mountain they had to climb. For the unstoppable force that was the Cleveland Indians in “Major League” (1989), the New York Yankees were the immovable object.
In a movie about the 2019 Cabrini Cavaliers, the villains would unquestionably be the Salisbury Seagulls, who had won two out of the last three NCAA championships at the Division III level and were on the warpath in their bid to reclaim the title. They had also beaten Cabrini in six of their seven matchups historically, most recently in a 13-5 second-half blowout at Edith Robb Dixon Field.
And they were the last obstacle standing between the Cavaliers and their first-ever shot at winning it all.
“It was different from the other times we played them, just because from the moment that York game ended we just had a different air about it,” Colfer said. “The next three-four days we were just relaxed, not confident, not overconfident, the guys were able to relax and recover from that York game and we just needed to find a way to build on the first three games.”
“Nobody was going to stop me, personally,” Jordan Krug, a senior attack for the 2019 squad, said. “We just knew that people beat them in the past and they might be that ’empire’ but we just knew it was going to take every single one of us and the energy was crazy right from the start.”
The team demonstrated how ready they were from the word go, as they shot out of the gate to an early lead, scoring three goals in just over 90 seconds on their way to a 6-2 advantage after one quarter. Salisbury scored twice early in the second quarter and after sophomore attack Kyle Tucker scored to make it 7-4, the Seagulls scored five unanswered goals to take the lead. Krug scored in the final seconds of the half, and the Cavs went to the locker room trailing 9-8.
They may have been behind on the scoreboard, but Colfer knew they had their opponents right where they wanted them.
“We just kept competing, we play kind of an up-tempo style so a lot of the stuff we do looks unscripted from afar,” Colfer said. “So when we get into those up and down games where guys are going to have to rely more on making athletic plays rather than running a scripted, slowed down offense, that’s really where we thrive.”
“The big thing with [Salisbury] is a lot of people are scared of them and once you let them in your head you’re going to lose that,” Krug said. “I just knew we had to keep going, all 60 minutes.”
The third quarter was a back-and-forth affair. Junior Bobby Cressman scored to tie the game early, but Salisbury pulled back ahead a few moments later. Then it was Gerzabek’s turn to tie the game, but once again Salisbury retook the lead moments later. With just over a minute left in the quarter, Krug scored his fifth goal of the game to tie it back up going to the final quarter.
After trading goals once again to start the fourth, junior Tyler Kostack scored to put the Cavs back ahead. Five scoreless minutes went by before junior Jake Klein scored, followed by another Krug goal barely a minute later and suddenly Cabrini had a 15-12 lead with five minutes to play. When the clock hit zero, the Cavaliers were on to the national championship game.
Krug would finish the day with a ridiculous seven goals on eight shots, his season-high, adding an assist. His final goal of the day was also his 73rd of the year, tying him with Damian Sobieski in 2014 for the program’s single-season goals record.
He would break it a week later, but he was more worried about the result of that game than the record. They had a date with Amherst for a national title.
“That whole week we just kept putting in the work. We never settled, we never thought this was a guaranteed win, we always think like we’re the underdogs and we’ve heard all these stories about how powerful Amherst is on offense,” Krug said. “We broke down the film, I think that’s the most film we watched all year, just picked them apart on film and carried that into gameday.”
“They had a lot of strong players, a lot of All-Americans, we had to be really disciplined and get the guys bought into our defensive gameplan,” Colfer said. “We knew we were capable of scoring, we just felt like we had to make sure our defense was ready and put in a gameplan that would allow us to be successful.”
When the players and coaches took the field at Lincoln Financial Field on May 26, 2019, the atmosphere was unlike anything they had experienced before. Before a crowd of over 18,000, largely in blue and white on the Cabrini side of the stadium, the whistle blew and the game was underway.
“It’s funny because when you first walk out for warmups, you notice because it’s like nothing you’ve ever done and really once the game starts, you’re into it,” Colfer said. “You focus on the game and it doesn’t really feel any different, your instincts take over.”
“It was a surreal moment,” Krug said. “It could be a distraction seeing the friends and family and thousands of people we had there supporting us but we knew what we had to do to get it done.”
Trailing 7-6 early in the third quarter, the Cavs got hot. Two goals to pull ahead, a Tucker goal to pull ahead again, two goals by Tucker and Kostack to make it a two-score game, three goals in a minute to pull away early in the fourth. Almost before anyone noticed, Cabrini had a 16-12 lead with the final minutes ticking away.
“I remember I got a double charlie horse, I was sweating like a dog, but there was like a minute left and we got the ball,” Krug said. “We were just playing keep-away because we were up like three or four at the moment and it really started sinking in.”
The clock hit zero, the players stormed the field and the party began. The Cabrini Cavaliers were national champions.
“I think it set in about three days after the game maybe, it’s really a hard feeling to describe,” Colfer said. “It’s late, we’re up four goals and I’m running up and down the sideline like it’s a tie ballgame.”
“It’s a very cerebral, out-of-body experience is the best way I can describe it; your brain is just in a different place, you almost have to watch it to see what happened after the game ended,” Colfer said.
“What we did changed so many people’s lives and the future of Cabrini lacrosse completely changed, it was just unbelievable,” Krug said.
On March 12, 2020, the NCAA announced that all remaining winter and spring sports championships, and effectively their respective seasons, were canceled due to the evolving COVID-19 crisis. What was then seen as a quick overreaction by the organization quickly became just one of the many far-reaching effects of the worldwide pandemic. While it may be admittedly insignificant relative to some of the other problems brought on by the coronavirus, sports do matter, and many people have been left reeling from cancelations like this.
For Cabrini’s men’s lacrosse team, it means that for the first time since 2000, they will not be the champions of their conference. However, no other team will win it either, so the Cavaliers will still be the reigning Atlantic East Conference (AEC) champions heading into the 2021 season.
Oh, yeah… they will still be the reigning national champs, too.
“I think I would do anything to be able to go back to that last week of practice,” Krug said. “We would spend seven hours a day working on lacrosse, just with the guys, getting ready, not wanting to settle for anything. I think it was the best week of my life.”
“As tough as it is that we can’t defend [the national title] this year, nobody can take it away from us either,” Colfer said. “We won one game and we get to celebrate it for two years.”
