FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Kenny Nims struggled to sift through a sea of television cameras, teammates and abandoned equipment. His face, a smeared canvas of blood and eye black, welled with tears as he gripped the national championship trophy in his right hand and demanded to see his head coach. ‘Where’s Desko?’ Nims said. ‘I’m going to bring him the trophy. I’m going to bring it to him.’ Figuratively, it was a symbolic gesture from one player in a group of All-American seniors to a head coach. Nims had brought him the trophy as a token of appreciation for the last four years. Literally, Nims had earned John Desko, the head coach of Syracuse men’s lacrosse team, the trophy that day. Without a stunning play by Nims to cap an improbable comeback, the Orange’s fortunes would be different. With four seconds remaining in regulation, Nims scored on a desperation pass from midfielder Matt Abbott, eliminating a three-goal deficit in a little more than three minutes and sending the game into overtime. The shot eventually propelled the Orange to a thrilling 10-9 overtime victory over Cornell in the national championship game on May 25 at Gillette Stadium in front of 41,935 fans. Cody Jamieson had the game-winner 1:20 into the extra session. It was the team’s second consecutive championship and record-breaking 11th title in program history. ‘It meant so much for him to bring me that trophy,’ Desko said. ‘He made a great play that put us in a position to win us the game. He’s the guy. If someone is going to make it happen, it’s him.’ It was a scene of pure ecstasy, with the memory of late-game heroics still lingering in the stadium. Just seven minutes beforehand, the Orange was running out of time, the feeling of desperation growing ever-apparent. With a little more than three minutes to play in regulation, the team trailed, 9-6. Nims, SU’s leading scorer, was in a vice-grip – locked down by the stingy Cornell defense and held scoreless. The Orange needed a shot in the arm. As the Big Red fans grew louder, the Orange put them back in their seats with a quick-strike goal at the 3:37 mark. Dan Hardy lofted the ball to attack Stephen Keogh, who spiked it between the posts and brought the team within two. Less than a minute later, it was Jamieson’s turn, bouncing a shot to the far right of Big Red goalie Jake Myers and into the net. Cornell head coach Jeff Tambroni took a timeout as the stadium erupted. The Orange was down one goal with nearly two minutes to play, and Desko had to rally his team during the break. ‘We had to cover a lot of things,’ Desko said of the timeout. ‘First of all, we needed a goal, so we had to set up the offense.’ Desko’s plan was foiled immediately. The play, designed in typical Syracuse fashion with a pass from Nims to Keogh, failed. Nims’ first point of the night wouldn’t come yet, as the shot skipped past Keogh and out-of-bounds. With the Orange still down by one score, the Cornell offense began to stall in order to run out the remaining 26 seconds. But it didn’t happen. SU midfielder Matt Abbott stripped the ball away fro mCornell’s Matt Moyer and charged down the field. Abbott and Nims made eye contact as the two raced to the goal. Now there were 10 seconds remaining, and Abbott tossed it up to Nims, who forced it past the keeper to tie the game and send the Orange into frenzy. ‘I wasn’t sure exactly how much time was left,’ Abbott said. ‘But I knew Kenny was down there somewhere. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, flipped it to him, and fortunately he scored just in the nick of time.’ Though the score was tied, the Big Red appeared deflated heading into the overtime period. A lead it had held nearly the entire game was dismantled in three short minutes as a deafening roar from the Syracuse fan section echoed throughout the field. The Big Red’s lone possession of overtime was brief. Orange defender Sid Smith stripped Cornell’s Ryan Hurley of the ball and whipped the ball upfield. Seconds later, Hardy found Jamieson, who blasted a shot past the keeper. Syracuse had just won the national title. Collectively, the Orange exploded from the sidelines, rushing toward Jamieson. Nims, Abbott and the rest were lost in a blur of orange and white that piled in the corner of the stadium. Jamieson searched for Smith, his longtime friend, to give him a hug. Defender John Lade clenched his fists and screamed ‘Champions!’ toward the crowd, and Nims grabbed the trophy, searching for his coach. As the field cleared and the team filed into the locker room, Nims and Desko had a chance to speak again. Nims told his coach about his summer internship. Desko talked about getting together for a barbecue at his place before everyone took off for summer. Standing there together, the two represented one of the most outstanding classes in Desko’s tenure as head coach. They helped him pick up the pieces from a lost season in 2007, won a national championship in 2008 and secured his legacy, defending the title in 2009. The journey had come to an end for now, one Desko will always remember. ‘I recruited Kenny’s father and watched Kenny grow up,’ he said. ‘You know, these guys were a special group who were highly-recruited; they were all family, so to speak. It’s a special time and it’s great for them to win a championship in their senior year.’

ctorr@syr.edu

A version of this story originally ran on dailyorange.com on May 25.