From a young age, Riley Donahue has been around Syracuse lacrosse.

As a 4-year-old, Donahue rode the men’s team’s bus to the final four with her father, assistant coach Kevin Donahue.

Spending time in lacrosse with him and at his former high school, West Genesee (New York) High School, helped build her foundation for lacrosse.

“I feel like those are big moments of my childhood,” Donahue said, “because I thought that was so cool.”

While those moments have been critical to her development as a lacrosse player, Donahue is going down her own path. Kevin Donahue was an All-American in 1979 and since then, three of Donahue’s uncles and two brothers — including her brother Dylan Donahue, who leads the SU men’s lacrosse team with 52 points this season — have played lacrosse at SU.

Donahue is the third-leading scorer for Syracuse women’s team this season and has overcome a rough two-game stretch against Notre Dame and North Carolina. In the last two games, she has three goals and three assists, helping the No. 7 Orange (11-6, 3-4 Atlantic Coast) pick up two consecutive wins. She is the only freshman to start and play in every game this season.

“I came here not just because they were here, just because I wanted to come here,” Donahue said. “It just felt right. I couldn’t imagine going anywhere else even if they didn’t go here.”

During Winter Break, SU head coach Gary Gait saw her working with Kevin Donahue in Manley Field House. She was working on improving her shooting and the first steps of her dodges. At times her father took her behind the net to give her a different perspective of the field.

Donahue and her brother came to campus throughout Winter Break to work out. While they did so separately, he helped her with her shooting. Kevin Donahue said that his daughter understood what it would take to play because her brother provided the pattern.

“She knew how hard it was going to be when she got here, she knew she had a great opportunity to play here and she knew how hard she had to work,” Dylan Donahue said. “So I think she just took control of it herself.”

And she has.

She missed four shots in SU’s loss against UNC, and worked after practice later the next week, peppering goalie Melina Woon Avery with shots as defender Kathy Rudkin fed her passes. Donahue had worked on shooting the ball earlier on free positions.

In her last two games she’s converted on three of five shots. Against Albany, she caught a Kayla Treanor pass at the beginning of the second half as she moved to the right of the crease. Donahue moved her stick left and bounced a shot into the top left corner.

Her father has seen improvement in her ability to move without the ball since she was in high school. Donahue said she has learned how to cut backdoor behind players.

“She’s really been trained well how to move off-ball, in particular,” Kevin Donahue said. “She didn’t have to do that in high school.”

Even her number is a derivative of her family’s number. Until this season, she wore No. 17 because her brothers wore the number. When she was younger, she always wanted to wear No. 4 and her family laughed about it. Now she wears No. 47— a little twist on a family tradition.

And the postseason could give Donahue a chance to put a twist on the family’s legacy, too.

She could add her own conference or national championship to the Donahues’ mantle. She could help win the school’s first women’s national championship in any sport.

But one thing is certain — this bus ride will be hers.

“That would be everything,” Donahue said. “I feel like I’ve always wanted that moment and just because of going to so many of theirs, I was just thinking that could be me someday.”

Published on April 21, 2015 at 9:21 pm

Contact Chris: cjlibona@syr.edu | @ChrisLibonati