Abigail Rehfuss first thought of her brother when the 2020 lacrosse season was canceled in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, her heart went out to all 29 of her players on the Siena women’s team. Your family, though, is your first team. At least that’s the way the Rehfusses have always operated.
“Oh my God, this can’t be it,” she thought. “After everything he’s done to get to where he is, this can’t be it.”
Less than a week later Abigail and her four sisters received what felt like the first piece of good news in a long time when the NCAA granted an extra year of eligibility to spring-sport athletes.
Their brother and youngest sibling would get another chance to fulfill his dream.
On April 27, Stephen Rehfuss made it official. Although he planned to become the ninth member in his extended family to attend Albany law school this fall, the do-it-all attackman’s professional future could wait. He became the fifth Syracuse men’s lacrosse player to announce he’d return for a fifth year.
“It was a pretty easy decision knowing that I wanted to come back and play and pursue that goal of a national championship,” Rehfuss told reporters during a Zoom call after the announcement. “I’ve worked my entire life to get to this point, it was my childhood dream, so I couldn’t really pass it up.”
Rehfuss and his sisters used the same phrase to describe the choice: a no-brainer.
Why wouldn’t it be? A little less than five-years ago Rehfuss weighed the possibility that he might never play college lacrosse, after securing his release from Holy Cross around Thanksgiving break of his freshman year.
His ascent from an unranked recruit who received only one Division I offer to a leader on the No.1 ranked team in the country was far less direct than the two-hour drive plus along I-90 from the Rehfuss family’s home in Latham, New York, to the Carrier Dome.
Despite the uncertainty he always believed he could play at the highest level. He just needed the opportunity.
The most recent evidence of that occurred when Syracuse extended their undefeated record to 5-0 in 2020 with a 15-9 win over Johns Hopkins on March 7. Guarded by a short stick for much of the game, Rehfuss had seven assists. He doled out six before halftime. Through five games he tallied a team-high 18 assists, which accounted for 41.9 percent of the Orange’s total. His 3.6 assists per game ranked third best in Division I, trailing only Michael Sowers and Grant Ament.
“He has a lot of trust in his teammates,” said Chase Scanlan who led Syracuse in scoring last season and converted half of Rehfuss’s assists. “I might be covered, but he knows where I’m going to move. It’s an almost unspoken connection we have there.”
Amid the 2,718 fans at Homewood Field that afternoon in March, Rehfuss also had his own cheering section. Charlotte Rehfuss, a federal judicial law clerk in the Northern District of New York, flew to Baltimore from Albany with her parents, Claire and Steve. Caroline and Anne came from New York City where they work for Samsung and Citi Bank, respectively. Alexandra traveled all the way from Columbus, Ohio, where she was finishing up a pediatric urology fellowship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
“None of us would want to miss any of his games,” said Charlotte Rehfuss, who can count on one hand the times that’s happened.
“Honestly, I love it,” Stephen Rehfuss said of growing up with five sisters. “I’ve always had people watching out for me and great role models.”
On Memorial Day weekend during his adolescent years, Rehfuss spent about half his time inside watching the likes of Steele Stanwick lead Virginia to the 2011 national championship. The other half, he’d dash to the backyard and try to mimic the Tewaaraton winner, or whoever else scored. He tried to do the same on the sidelines of his sisters’ countless games when they starred at Shaker High School.
If Rehfuss could not attend Abigail’s games at Loyola (Md.), he’d sit glued in front of the computer and watch them via Gametracker with the same diligence he’s shown more recently indexing depositions as paralegal assistant at his dad’s law firm, where Abigail Rehfuss also works as an associate.
He’d later pepper his second oldest sister with questions, trying to bring the statistical displays to life. He’d clonk around the house in the extra Under Armour shoes Abigail brought home from Loyola or do his homework while wearing a Princeton helmet Caroline procured from one of her friends on the men’s team.
“He lived and breathed the sport even from such a young age,” Charlotte Rehfuss said.
The Rehfuss sisters still joke that they know the names of most of the college stars from that era due to the “million highlight videos” Stephen would binge then try to replicate. Given the range and detail of impressions he can produce on command when shooting around before or after Syracuse practices, he could probably take requests.
Described by most as quiet or reserved, Rehfuss seems most comfortable cradling a stick. Bouncing through the hallways of his family’s home during quarantine, he’ll post up his sisters or run around them like would-be defenders.
“He’s always faking trick shots or pretending to score,” said Bradley Voigt, one of Rehfuss’s linemates in 2019. “He’s like a little kid with his stick."
Yet, lacrosse was far from the only sport the Rehfuss family played. Their dad was an All-American swimmer at Siena and a two-time Lake Placid Ironman triathlete. Their mom runs five to six miles a day. They stressed the benefits of an active lifestyle. They also had a rule when it came to their kids’ athletic pursuits.
Play a sport every season or get a job.
Basketball, swimming, tennis, soccer, track and field, golf, you name it. They were also expected to give their full effort in every endeavor.
When Abigail Rehfuss talks to her players at Siena about putting in extra “work,” she sometimes thinks the word can take on a negative connotation. That’s never been a problem for her brother. “I look at someone like Stephen and playing lacrosse isn’t work for him,” she said. “It’s his hobby and it’s his passion. He truly enjoys it.”
“He is a kid that perfects his trade,” said Shaker High boys’ lacrosse coach Shawn Hennessey.
It’s become a part of lacrosse cannon that Tewaaraton winner Pat Spencer was a 5-foot-6 his sophomore year at Boys’ Latin when he played on the junior varsity team. Less known perhaps is that when Hennessey started coaching Rehfuss, who’s now listed at six feet tall and 183 pounds, he was barely five-feet hovered around 100 pounds. He started on varsity his freshman year and tallied 34 goals and 10 assists. His point totals ballooned every year. He soon burnished his own legacy for the Blue Bison and set the program record with 319 career points.
No one is allowed to wear the No. 5 until they eclipse that mark.
It wasn’t just the number of points Rehfuss put up at Shaker, but how he scored them that Hennessey remembers most vividly of the player who started playing with a girls’ stick and still keeps one nearby to hone his hand-eye coordination.
Throughout his junior and senior years Rehfuss finished several passes near the crease by jabbing the ball past the goalie with the throat of his stick. The motion reminded Hennessey of a pool cue shot.
“What are you doing?” Hennessey asked him the first time he pulled it off.
“I don’t have to catch the ball if I can just stab it in,” Rehfuss explained.
“He has a great knack for self-evaluation and understanding for what he thinks he can accomplish in the game,” Hennessey said. “That’s always been his MO.”
Throughout his conversations with numerous college coaches, Hennessey spent most of the time talking up his undersized star’s potential. “Wait until he gets to his junior or senior year,” he’d tell them. “You’re going to see the things this kid can do.” But in the age of early recruiting future projections were often outweighed by size.
“They were taking eighth graders at that time,” Hennessey said. “No Division I lacrosse coach was going to look at a 95-pound Stephen Rehfuss and say, ‘oh, we have to have that guy.’”
For as long as Rehfuss can remember he’s loved the process of practice. But in the fall of 2015 at Holy Cross, he didn’t like the way the game was being played. It started to feel like a burden.
“I just knew it wasn’t the spot for me,” he said. “I had always found success and had joy playing, but I think having a bad lacrosse experience can then change your viewpoint on it.”
According to Hennessey, Rehfuss approached the tenuous time after he got his release the same way he handled everything else in his life. He took a lot of different perspectives and gave it his best effort. Meanwhile Hennessey sent out more highlight tapes and made more calls. They got a lot of “no’s” or were told “we’re all set.”
But a call from Syracuse assistant Lelan Rogers in January of 2016 changed the course of Rehfuss’s lacrosse career and his life. He visited and committed the next day.
“He had a difficult road getting to Syracuse, so it’s been so nice to see that his hard work has paid off,” said Charlotte Rehfuss. “You just knew he had way more to offer.”
Survey Rehfuss’s past and present teammates and coaches and they’ll throw out the phrases “team first,” “cerebral” and “leader by example” more often than he dishes assists. Last spring’s recipient of the Doris Soladay Award -- Syracuse athletic department’s highest honor -- places little stock in personal accolades.
“He always makes the right play,” Voight said. “It’s never about getting points for himself, it’s always about doing the right thing for the team.”
While many of Rehfuss’s contributions aren’t evident on a stat sheet, the numbers do demonstrate the fluidity of his game and a willingness to fit wherever gives his team the best chance to win. In 2019 he tallied 18 goals and 21 assists in 14 games when Syracuse relied more on their attack to score. With the emergence of perhaps the best first midfield line in the country this past spring, Rehfuss played more of a facilitating role. Through five games he had two goals to go with his 18 assists.
“He’s done an unbelievable job changing and developing his game into exactly what they need,” Dave Pietramala said.
“He doesn't fit one mold,” said former Syracuse goalie and 2017 grad Evan Molloy. “One game he'll seem like a tactical player from Baltimore and throws the ball overhand and gets seven assists. The next game he'll have three around the world finishes. It's interesting that he can switch his role in and out and play the same position in different ways. I think that keeps teams on their toes.”
Rehfuss possesses a confident, but selfless demeanor that seems almost ingrained into his DNA. Abigail Rehfuss noted there’s no room to have an ego in their household.
“I think his team-first mentality and persona really comes from being a part of a big family,” she added. “You always have the best interests of your siblings and parents at heart first before yourself.”
That principle sometimes strays though during intrafamily competition. On the day after Thanksgiving, the Rehfusses went on a family outing to NextGen Indoor Golf. Everyone paired up into teams, except for Stephen. While the contest was “all in good fun,” Abigail Rehfuss was still happy to report that she and her sister Caroline crushed their little bro.
The competitive environment extends to paddle tennis, Scrabble, or the Rehfuss’s latest fitness kick during quarantine. “We’re Peloton addicts,” Abigail Rehfuss said of the hi-tech exercise bikes with workouts streamed live and on-demand.
While they’re the first ones to tell him if he needs to ride harder, Rehfuss’s sisters are also his biggest supporters. Charlotte Rehfuss had trouble watching her brother’s first game from the metal bleachers inside the Carrier Dome, she was so nervous. But those worries soon faded when he checked into the game during the fourth quarter against Siena. He tallied a hat trick in the final 5:57, including a sidearm shot from the left wing that Charlotte had seen him practice “a million times” in the backyard.
Rehfuss made his presence known so quickly, the broadcast announcer even mispronounced his last name when calling the goals. He learned it soon enough.
Rehfuss’s breakthrough on a national stage, however, came later that spring when he helped ignite a comeback overtime win against North Carolina with two goals and two assists all in the second half.
“He just went in and took over,” Voight said.
Rehfuss kept his head down and kept working. He also didn’t look back. He led the team in scoring his sophomore year. He battled through illness the first half of his junior season but still managed to start every game and paced the Orange in assists.
All of those years fell short of a trip to the Final Four. The program that boasts 27 trips NCAA semifinals last played on Memorial Day weekend in 2013. There was the shocking upset to Towson in the 2017 NCAA Quarterfinals. The one goal loss to Cornell in the Carrier Dome in the First Round of 2018, then a 15-13 defeat at the hands of Pat Spencer and Loyola at the same stage in 2019.
“These guys are some of the best friends I’ve ever had,” a visibly distraught Rehfuss said during the postgame press conference when asked about that year’s senior class. “That fact that we won’t get another day in the locker or going to get food…it sucks.”
The video is hard to watch.
Rehfuss said he’s thankful for all the lessons he’s learned from the older players who have come before him. Every win is for them. He believes that once you’re at Syracuse, you feel like you’re a part of the program forever.
Sounds a lot like a family.
“We're just hoping one [that] he gets a season this year, and two that fans will be allowed or at least family,” Abigail Rehfuss said. “If he's only allowed one or two family members, we're going to have to fight over it.”