This article appears in the January edition of US Lacrosse Magazine, available exclusively to US Lacrosse members. Join or renew today! Thank you for your support.

T

he stands at Stony Brook’s LaValle Stadium are a sea of red on game days. Ally Kennedy will head into the crowd as total strangers tell her how great she played. Little girls pull her aside to ask for selfies. Later, those fans will stand in line and wait for an autograph. 

Kennedy loves every minute of it.

“Obviously, I love playing here because it’s home,” Kennedy said. “But I don’t feel like there’s any atmosphere like it.”

Kennedy would know. She’s sort of an expert on LaValle Stadium. 

She remembers when that sea of red was three rows of parents surrounded by a bunch of empty bleachers. This was a decade ago, during the waning years of Stony Brook’s pre-Joe Spallina era. Kennedy went to every game to watch her sister, Cori, who played defense for the Seawolves. 

Forget the national rankings. Those Stony Brook teams struggled to crack the top five of the America East.

There wasn’t a sea of red then, just a couple of tiny rogue waves — Kennedy and her friend, Barbara, bouncing across an empty stadium and going crazy alone in front of the scoreboard. Back then, it was easier to get good seats.

“I’ve seen so much change over the last 10 years,” Kennedy said. “It’s insane.”

Now, Stony Brook is a perennial top-10 team and always in the national title discussion. The Seawolves seem to be highlighted on “SportsCenter” as often as the New York Islanders. Kennedy, a fifth-year senior midfielder and US Lacrosse Magazine’s Preseason Player of the Year, is in the U.S. national team player pool and a contender for the Tewaaraton Award. Her coach calls her the best two-way player in the country.

Stony Brook women’s lacrosse has come a long way. Kennedy has come a long way with it.

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The Kennedys are from North Babylon, a blue-collar town in the middle of Long Island. It’s known for producing great athletes. Reigning NBA champion Danny Green briefly quarterbacked the high school football team. Future WNBA star Bria Hartley was starring for UConn women’s basketball at the same time that Kennedy was bouncing around SBU’s empty bleachers.

“We had really good athletes, but it’s not really a lacrosse town,” Kennedy said. “It’s kind of a forgotten sport.”

There was no youth girls’ lacrosse team when Kennedy started playing. She played with the boys.

“It helped me get my competitiveness,” she said. “But I think it also helped me in the sense of not really caring about who I’m competing against, not worrying about who’s next to me, and just playing for love of the game.”

Eventually her dad, Michael, helped start a youth team for girls, and Kennedy began redefining what lacrosse in North Babylon meant. She made varsity as a seventh grader. In 10th grade, her team won just three games. The next year, they made the playoffs for the first time in school history. They were overmatched, but it didn’t matter who was on the other side of the field.

Spallina still remembers watching Kennedy play her last high school game. The goalie had trouble with a clear, so Kennedy grabbed the ball out of the crease herself and headed up the field. The opposing team proceeded to throw everything at her, whacking and whacking, as she made her way. In all, they fouled her eight times.

“I counted it,” Spallina said. “It was a game she was never going to win, but she was competing as if her life depended on it — which if you know this kid is how she approaches everything.” 

Kennedy finally scored on a free-position goal. Spallina turned to his assistant coach.

“This game needs to end quick before this girl gets hurt,” he said. “Because we really, really need her.”

He was right. Kennedy arrived on campus just as Stony Brook was crashing the national party. She scored 39 goals as a freshman on a team that went 20-2 and lost by one goal in the NCAA quarterfinals to eventual champion Maryland. The next year, the Seawolves achieved the program’s first No. 1 ranking. Her teammates were featured on ESPN and on the cover of magazines.

The autograph lines grew longer. The red sea grew bigger. Veteran teammates like Kylie Ohlmiller and Courtney Murphy became national names, synonymous with Stony Brook lacrosse.

“I learned so much from them, not only on the field, but about how to carry yourself off the field, be a great teammate and be a leader,” Kennedy said. “They’re the first known names. They paved the way for Stony Brook. It was an honor to be alongside and helping them pave the way for everyone else that’s next.”

Kennedy was named a captain before her junior year, just months after she shined with five goals in a loss to Boston College in the NCAA quarterfinals. Being a captain brought pressure, but it helped her hone the message she’s since led by. The message also helped her find the strength to get through a tumultuous — not to mention abrupt — senior season in 2020.

“Play as if it’s your last year.”

Last spring, in what should have been her final season with the Seawolves, Kennedy practiced what she preached. In the first game, a crucial tilt with Syracuse that showed Stony Brook still deserved to be among the nation’s elite, Kennedy scored four goals — including the eventual winner — in a 17-16 win at the Carrier Dome. 

Outside of a 12-10 loss on the road against Florida in the third game of the season, the Seawolves were firing away and cementing themselves as a favorite to make a run at Memorial Day Weekend. 

It all came to an end while Stony Brook’s student-athletes met in the Island Federal Credit Union Arena with athletic director Shawn Heilbron, who was discussing the potential options if the America East postponed sports due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While he was speaking, someone notified him that the NCAA had canceled spring championships.

In literally an instant, the season was over.

“It was soul-crushing,” Kennedy said. “It was like they pulled the rug right out from under us.”

Kennedy was quick to say she’d come back if given the chance. Others, like Taryn Ohlmiller and Sydney Gagnon, took a bit more time to make their decisions.

“For some of them, it’s clean and quick,” Spallina said. “All players need closure. That’s the biggest thing. How do you want it to be? Are you content with the way it ended? Or do you need the finality? The part that can’t be accounted for is the competitive fire and the bonds they have with their friends and teammates.”

For Kennedy, it might actually work out for the best. Outside of another chance to chase a national championship, Kennedy is in a coaching program that will grant her a New York State coaching certification when she’s done. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do after life at Stony Brook, and now she has a clearer picture. 

She’s also relishing the opportunity to live in a house with Ohlmiller, Gagnon, Siobhan Rafferty and Kelsi LoNigro. They gather weekly to watch “The Bachelorette” together.

And, perhaps most importantly, she’s thrilled to be back on the field. As are most athletes. Kennedy said that underclassmen now have the same perspective that seniors and graduate students do — any game could be the last.

“You never know if it could be an injury or a global pandemic that ends your season,” Kennedy said. “I didn’t want to be a fifth-year senior. I didn’t plan that. But I’m so happy I came back. Even though this year does look different in so many ways with the masks and not being able to compete with anybody besides ourselves right now, this experience that I’m having is more than I can ask for.”

All told, Kennedy scored 22 goals and controlled 47 draws in five games last spring. Entering 2021, Kennedy ranks second in program history in draw controls (242), fourth in goals (193), fifth in points (248), fifth in ground balls (133) and 10th in assists (55). 

None of it comes as a surprise to her coach.

“She’s a super super-skilled kid who is also one of the biggest try-hards I’ve ever seen,” Spallina said.

Being a super-skilled try-hard can take a girl from North Babylon pretty far. In Kennedy’s case, all the way to Team USA. She still remembers where she was when she got the phone call asking to try out.

“I called my dad, and we cried about it together,” she said. “That’s been a dream of mine since I was 8. I’m never going to get used to it because there’s no experience like it. Having the red white and blue on your chest. Playing for something bigger than yourself.”

Then again, Kennedy plays for Stony Brook. She already wears red, white and blue. And even if 10 years ago the team was literally playing in front of little more than Kennedy herself, it’s grown into something so much bigger. 

Kenny DeJohn contributed to this article.