GENEVA, N.Y. – They crowded him as he came off the field Tuesday night. The Syracuse men’s lacrosse team had come to pay its respects to tri-captain and talisman, senior attack Mike Leveille.

Just four minutes remained against Hobart, with the No. 2 Orange holding a comfortable 13-5 lead – one it would still hold when time was up – and Leveille had earned this break. His three-goal burst at the end of the third quarter and beginning of the fourth had shifted the game from a melodrama played in frigid winds to a blowout.

‘Yeah baby, yeah baby,’ he shouted as he came off McCooey Field. ‘Hell yeah, baby.’

He weaved through the teammates who crowded around him, dishing out fist pounds and chest bumps to senior Steven Brooks, to freshman Joel White, to each who came past.

At the end of the line of greeters, standing back and waiting, stood junior Kenny Nims, fellow attack. Leveille reached out and hugged him too.

‘We got that trophy back,’ Leveille yelled again.

He was talking about the Kraus-Simmons Trophy, the one Statesman and Orange has played for each year since 1986.

And keeping that trophy would have been a much tougher task for Syracuse Tuesday without Leveille and Nims, the team’s two leading scorers for the season.

Shackled early on, the duo exploded in the second half, with Nims adding three goals and two assists to Leveille’s four points. Leveille also scored his 100th career goal, the 21st player in SU history and the first since 2006 graduate Brian Crockett.

‘Mike’s been doing that all year,’ SU head coach John Desko said. ‘When we needed some goals, he’s come up big for us. All of sudden he’ll dodge to score, and then they start to slide to him and he’s able to find the open man.’

That’s where Nims comes in. His work Tuesday night, mostly done in front of the net, gave him 17 goals on the season – one shy of his total from last year.

‘Kenny’s a great player, and we expect that out of him every game,’ Leveille said. ‘He stepped up big time and got us going today.’

Syracuse needed a boost from the two attack, facing an aggressive Hobart squad that pressured the team for most of the night.

The Orange led 5-2 at the half but looked sloppy, with shots, passes and clearing attempts all sailing away from its intended targets at different times. Despite the lead, the offense was held in check. Nims had a goal, but Leveille had no points.

‘We had some bad turnovers,’ Nims said afterward, still wearing his helmet to deflect the sky’s drizzle. ‘I think we were a little too excited to come out in the beginning.’

Desko hoped to shake things up after the break, searching for openings for his scorers.

‘In the first half we were going with our dodges right away, and [the Hobart defenders] were able to slide and help out defensively,’ Desko said. ‘So we spread it out, got the ball around and stretched their defense out and executed better.’

Which is a technical way of saying, Leveille and Nims took over.

The junior Nims scored twice to open the second half. Then, with the score 7-3, Leveille arrived.

With White, a long-stick midfielder, streaking up field in transition, the attack fed him for a low shot that beat Statesman goalie Max Silberlicht low and to the right.

Then came the three goals: one off a rebound, one assisted by Nims and finally one on his own, twisting and falling to the AstroTurf – and still beating Silberlicht.

By the time he was through, it was 11-4. It was over.

After the teams shook hands, Leveille sprinted toward the Krause-Simmons trophy. He snatched it up with his right hand and raised it toward the sky – the same motion he makes when he scores.

The team mobbed him again, as friends and family spilled onto the field.

‘I feel like that trophy belongs to Syracuse,’ he said.

ramccull@syr.edu

Published on March 25, 2008 at 12:00 pm