CHRIS KAVANAGH RAISED A POSTER as high as his 10-year-old arms could reach. “#50 is my BROTHER!” the sign said.
Chris and Pat Kavanagh with the number 50 painted on their faces watched from the stands as their brother, Matt, played in the NCAA final on May 26, 2014. They idolized him and threw behind-the-back passes at team barbecues. The brothers’ awe turned to disappointment, however, after Jordan Wolf led Duke to an 11-9 victory over Notre Dame.
“Chris snapped the sign in half when we lost,” said his mother, Mary Kavanagh. “I wanted to save it because it was a special sign.”
“I’m pretty sure he was angrier about it than I was,” Matt Kavanagh said.
Mary Kavanagh wanted the sign as a keepsake. She didn’t know at the time a replica would be necessary. Colleen Kavanagh — the lone girl among the five Kavanagh siblings — took it upon herself to make a new one in May. On one side, it said, “#50 is my brother!” On the other, “#51 is my brother!” Matt Kavanagh held the sign proudly.
“Knowing what we had been through, trying to get that first championship under Coach Corrigan, it would have been so special,” Matt Kavanagh said. “This time, knowing that Pat and Chris were along for the ride with us and now I was in their shoes, it was pretty amazing.”
Pat Kavanagh dragged Chris Kavanagh to the ground and both let out a roar after the buzzer sounded at Lincoln Financial Field.
“The best memories of my childhood were watching Matt play at Notre Dame,” Pat Kavanagh said. “To get it done with my little brother, who’s been my best friend since he was born, it’s special.”
The brothers looked like they were in a street fight. Chris Kavanagh traded face paint for six stitches just below his left eyebrow — the product of a hit to the head against Virginia — and excessive eye black. Pat Kavanagh had a dark blue elastic TheraBand wrapped around his badly bruised left hamstring. Athletic trainer Mandy Merritt consulted with colleagues from the U.S. national team to devise a plan.
The band served as an artifcial hamstring, pulled as tightly as possible from his calf to his thigh to give him flexion. It was delivered from Baltimore the morning of the championship game and handed to Kavanagh through the window of the team bus.
“Pat’s a warrior and he was always going to play,” Merritt said. “The Kavanaghs are like hockey players. Spit the tooth out and keep going.”
The injury relegated the Tewaaraton Award finalist to a limited role as a decoy, albeit one who kept Duke’s first-team All-American defenseman Kenny Brower occupied throughout the game.
Entenmann admired Matt Kavanagh’s fearless dodging, relentless riding and scrappy ground ball play as a Notre Dame fan growing up. Now he sees the same in his brothers.
“I love watching them just fly around the field and chase guys down,” Entenmann said. “It’s like they have a personal vendetta against them. They never stop.”
They share the clutch gene. After Duke rallied from a 6-1 deficit to tie the game at 7 late in the third quarter, Pat Kavanagh threaded a pass through traffic that Tevlin deposited to put Notre Dame back up by one. Twenty-seven seconds later, Chris Kavanagh ducked underneath Blue Devils defender Aidan Maguire, dove in front of the goal mouth and tucked a shot across his body inside the near pipe to beat the buzzer.
Duke never got any closer than that.
This article appears in the July/August edition of USA Lacrosse Magazine. Join our momentum.