Why Cornell Legends Believe CJ Kirst Can Lead Them Back to the Promised Land

Cornell ascended to No. 1 in the rankings Monday.

The Big Red would prefer to be No. 1 on the final Monday of the season.

It’s been 48 years since Cornell last won the NCAA men’s lacrosse championship, but in that time the proud Ivy League program has produced two Tewaaraton Award winners, 21 first-team All-Americans and plenty of contending teams.

“We’ve been on the doorstep,” said Mike French, Cornell’s all-time leading scorer who was part of the 1976 team that won the school’s second national title and is considered one of the best NCAA teams ever.

The Big Red won again in 1977 after French graduated. Eamon McEneaney had three goals and five assists in the 16-8 title game romp over Johns Hopkins as Cornell became the first team ever to repeat as national champions.

McEneaney had also played on the football team and at 5-foot-10 was an athletic freak capable of reverse dunking a basketball with two hands. He died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. His No. 10 jersey is one of two retired by Cornell along with the No. 21 of George Boiardi, whose 2004 death on the field after being struck by a ball in a game was equally defining and unifying for the Big Red.

“We've had some epic leaders of the program and some really tragic losses that have brought guys even closer together,” said Mitch Belisle, a 2007 Cornell graduate and former U.S. Men’s National Team player. “It's just like a true lacrosse family.”

The family has tuned in to see Cornell reach the final four nine times since 1977, and alumni have watched those that followed them chase a national championship with a mix of pride, anguish, heartbreak and empathy.

“I don't sit down and watch the whole game because my stomach gets all turned up and nuts like when I was playing,” Belisle said. “It's almost better for me to keep an arm's distance and just cheer as I check in on the score. But it's a great way to just keep everyone united and keep talking about the thing we love, which is Cornell lacrosse.”

Belisle was on the last Cornell team ranked No. 1. That was in May 2007, after the Big Red finished the regular season 13-0. An overtime win over Albany in the NCAA quarterfinals sent Cornell to championship weekend for the first time since 1988. But after Brian Clayton scored with 17 seconds left to bring the Big Red all the way back from a 10-3 third-quarter deficit, Duke scored with three seconds left to end the season of one of the best Big Red teams at 15-1.

As much as it hurt, Belisle said, nothing compares to the devastation the Big Red faithful felt two years later. “That was just so close and so painful,” he said.

The 2009 Cornell team had a freshman phenom in Rob Pannell and the Tewaaraton Award winner in Max Seibald. The Big Red ripped Virginia in the NCAA semifinals at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., to land in their first national title game in 21 years. John Glynn (three goals and two assists) and Seibald (two goals) helped stake Cornell to a 9-6 lead over Syracuse with less than four minutes to go.

But the Orange rallied with three straight goals, the last coming with 4.5 seconds left in regulation set up by a late turnover and the “Foxborough Flip” from Matt Abbott to Kenny Nims to force overtime. Syracuse completed the comeback as Cody Jamieson scored to deliver a crushing 10-9 loss to Cornell.

“It’s just indescribable,” then-Big Red head coach Jeff Tambroni said at the time. “You put so much time and effort in. You sacrifice so much from your own families and these guys from their social lives. Knowing that they were five seconds away from being the best team in college lacrosse, that’s a tough one to swallow.”