Carol Cantele thought everything was lined up just right for her program’s first national championship.
It was the spring of 2010, and Gettysburg was hosting the NCAA Division III final four on campus. Cantele’s veteran squad was battle tested and peaking. Six games against top 10 teams had prepared the Bullets for the tough games of the postseason, and Gettysburg had easily dispatched its first two NCAA Tournament opponents, winning by 13 and 14 goals.
“We were loaded, with 10 senior starters and playing on our home field,” she said. “I mean, it was a Cinderella story waiting to happen.”
But alas, midnight struck early. Gettysburg lost in the national semifinal and watched its storybook ending fade away. Destiny had once again dealt a cruel fate to Cantele’s program, a perennial D-III contender that had earned its fourth final four appearance in five years but again finished just shy of being the belle of the ball.
“That one really stung,” Cantele said. “With the graduation of those 10, I set my standard for the following season as, well, here we go back to the bottom, and we’ll build again.”
But the veteran coach had a valuable lesson coming.
Her 2011 squad, featuring 12 freshman and 19 underclassmen on the rebuilt roster, finished the job that her prior Gettysburg teams had not been able to, capturing the program’s first NCAA championship during a 19-4 campaign in Cantele’s 19th season at the helm.
“Those mighty 25 players had an unshakeable belief that they were going to do it, despite having just three seniors leading the crew,” Cantele said. “I think what made it so special was that we really didn’t see it coming, and those are great when they happen. I learned a big lesson that season.”
Cantele added two more NCAA titles to her Hall of Fame resume, winning back-to-back crowns with dominating teams in 2017 and 2018. Those championships, unlike the title in 2011, were anticipated.
“Those were a part of the mission,” she said. “We knew we had the talent and the experience. We had all the tools to make a run, and those championships were spoken about and ingrained. It was simply an attitude of ‘let’s go to work.’”
Cantele retired following the 2022 season as the second winningest coach in NCAA Division III history with 451 career victories. She led Gettysburg to 21 NCAA tournament appearances, eight national semifinal appearances, and 13 conference championships. Through it all, she said the focus was always on having fun.
“As long as we kept laughing and singing and celebrating and dancing while we were doing meaningful, purposeful and important work, we were fine,” Cantele said. “One of my core tenets in coaching was that we’re going to enjoy this. Lacrosse is a game and everything we do is about joy. And I was blessed to have a staff and players that had that delicate balance of knowing when to let our hair down and have fun, and when to stay serious and tackle what we needed to get done.”
Cantele and many of her former players and coaches will have another chance to ‘let their hair down’ and enjoy some more fun on January 11 when she is officially inducted to the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 2024. The joy will be a given.
Tickets for the induction ceremony at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel are available for online purchase at www.usalacrosse.com/HOF.
