Flames Lacrosse claims first MCLA Division I national championship in Texas

Liberty University’s No. 1-ranked men’s lacrosse team raised its first national championship trophy on its third consecutive trip to the MCLA Division I National Championship Final Four, Saturday afternoon at the Round Rock (Texas) Multipurpose Complex.

The Flames (19-1) extended their program-record win streak to 19 games and eclipsed the all-time tournament scoring mark with 73 goals in four games after opening an 8-4 halftime lead on No. 3 Georgia Tech and waiting out a 1 hour, 45-minute lightning delay to outlast the Yellow Jackets, 17-12.

“The way these guys were playing, that doesn’t surprise me,” Liberty 15th-year Head Coach Kyle McQuillan said after the Flames won the four games by an average margin of eight goals. “This is a special day for Liberty Lacrosse. Our goal was to win it not just for these guys, but all of the teams that came before us.”

McQuillan helped the Flames rise from the ashes 20 years after their van’s head-on collision with a semi-truck on a Spring Break road trip through Alabama left Head Coach John Westfall and his two young sons and several players with extensive injuries and forced the program to suspend play for five seasons.

In addition to the wives of McQuillan and some of his assistant coaches, who surprised them by flying out from Lynchburg, Va., to see the final, Westfall made the trip from Phoenix.

“To have him here and come full circle, I am super happy he made the trip, and to re-establish connections with a lot of former players from our program,” said McQuillan, who was a member of the team that experienced devastating tragedy.

He and his coaching staff has steadily transformed the program into one that has taken baby steps and giant leaps forward to reach Saturday’s triumphant pinnacle of success.

“If we were like the phoenix rising from the ashes, it was a slow and steady climb over a 15-year period,” McQuillan said. “The last 10-plus years has just been building from one season to next. The last two years, we’d made it to the semifinals at the national tournament and hit a bit of a wall, so for us to break past that in the semifinal and in the same year win a national championship (is monumental).”

“This was our fifth year coming to Texas, so to be able to leave this state with a national championship is great,” he added, noting the national tournament will move to Richmond, Va., next spring. “It is great that it’ll be in our back yard and awesome that we were able to get it done here this year.”

Graduate faceoff specialist Caleb Hammett gave the Flames a 3-2 lead that they would not relinquish with an unassisted score off a winning draw in the final 35 seconds of the first quarter. But he was not as dominant as he has been all season and even at nationals, as Georgia Tech won 19 of 32 faceoffs for the game.

After the lightning delay, graduate attack Braden Landry, who scored a game-high five goals to go with his one assist, received an entry pass from sophomore midfielder Hunter Rockhill (1G, 2A) near the right crease and finished from point-blank range despite taking a hit, padding the Flames’ lead to 9-4 at the 14:20 mark.

Junior middie Luke Campbell later responded to a four-goal Yellow Jackets run by taking a fantastic feed from graduate attack Keaton Mohs (1G, 4A) from behind the left side of the cage and ripping a sharp-angled shot inside the near post at the 4:18 mark. Less than a minute and a half later, Mohs assisted Landry from behind the right post as he cut in front for a catch-and-release finish in deep.

“Landry exemplifies the type of team we were this season,” McQuillan said. “We were daring teams to try to take Keaton (Mohs) out of the game, because we knew that other guys could step up. Georgia Tech had some good systems in place to slow us down and prevent us from having success in ways we typically do. But we have the deepest team in the MCLA, with guys up and down the roster capable of scoring.”

As he had in Thursday’s semifinal win over BYU, Liberty senior defender Conor Guiltinan caused a critical turnover, knocking the stick out of the hands of a Georgia Tech player as he crossed the midfield, springing the ball loose. The Flames capitalized on a phenomenal shot from the top of the box by sophomore middle Easton Cahill that ricocheted off the left and right pipes before landing in the back of the net for a 13-10 advantage with 6:11 remaining in regulation.

“Easton is one of those guys that is so clutch,” McQuillan said. “He scores very impactful goals at very important moments, and that goal late in the game was the backbreaker.”

Mohs, who became the all-time MCLA Division I scoring leader in Tuesday’s quarterfinal rout of Arizona State, finished the tournament with 35 points in four games and 362 for his five-year career.

>Video by Andrew Musser/Club Sports Video & Media Coordinator

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