Notre Dame wins first men’s lacrosse national championship in program history
In the City of Brotherly Love, Notre Dame men’s lacrosse brothers Chris and Pat Kavanagh helped the Fighting Irish win the first national championship in program history. Poetic.
The No. 3 seed Irish beat No. 1 seed Duke 13-9 at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Monday. The Irish stormed out to a 6-1 halftime lead, but Duke came all the way back in the third quarter to tie the game at 7-7 with 1:01 remaining in the penultimate frame.
Pat Kavanagh, the injured elder brother playing with a bum hamstring, deftly found Brian Tevlin in front of the net. Tevlin kept the high pass over his shoulder and fired the ball into the net to give Notre Dame an 8-7 lead with 27 seconds left in the third.
Then the Kavanaghs went to work.
Notre Dame lost the ensuing faceoff but retained possession via a turnover. Chris Kavanagh, a sophomore, wrapped around behind the Duke crease and made a spinning pivot to get between his defender and the Duke netminder. He rifled the ball past the latter to give the Irish a two-goal cushion with 0.6 seconds left in the third.
The game was never tied again. The Kavanagh brothers’ celebration was 15 minutes away.
“It means everything,” Chris Kavanagh said in a postgame interview with ESPN with his arm draped around Pat’s shoulder. “We’ve been through so much together. Unspeakable things. This is it. This is the dream come true. I couldn’t have done it without his support. I mean, look around. To do it with your [freaking] brother, it means everything.”
Notre Dame scored the first goal of the fourth quarter to make it 10-7, but the Irish still had to withstand a furious attempt by the Blue Devils to knot things up again. Notre Dame goalie Liam Entenmann, a first-team All-American, was up for the challenge. He had 7 saves in the fourth quarter alone and a season-high total of 18 in the game.
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Duke ranked fourth nationally in goals per game (15.17) going into the matchup. Notre Dame held the Blue Devils well under that mark. The single goal in the first half thanks in large part to stingy Notre Dame defense and Entenmann’s heroics in the final frame went hand in hand in giving the Irish its first-ever title.
Duke pulled its goalie with 4:22 left, losing 11-8. Notre Dame promptly scored twice into the empty net in a span of less than a minute to pull ahead 13-8. The ESPN broadcast showed head coach Kevin Corrigan, in his 35th season with the program, who couldn’t help but crack a smile.
He knew.
Everyone clad in green in the stadium seats knew. Duke needed a miracle at that point. It never came. And for the first time after all these years and all these wins — the most ever by a head coach in DI history at a single school — Corrigan is able to say he’s a national champion. It’s something he’ll cherish forever with the Kavanaghs, Entenmann and everyone involved.
“You wait your whole career to see this right here,” Corrigan said in a postgame on-field interview.
Well worth the wait.
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