CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Jay Pfeifer never knew how much Syracuse needed him.

He didn’t think he could be that important. He was just a freshman from a small town in Maryland lucky enough to start for one of the nation’s best lacrosse programs.

So when Pfeifer’s teammates and coaches rallied around him after he allowed five goals in the first six minutes against Virginia on Saturday, it meant a lot. So much, in fact, that Pfeifer repaid his teammates by clamping down on Virginia’s offense for the remaining 54 minutes, keying a 15-13 win over the Cavaliers at Klochner Stadium.

‘My teammates got behind me and told me to keep my head up,’ Pfeifer said. ‘I was feeling pretty down on myself, kind of depressed. I just realized that I was letting down my teammates and I couldn’t let that happen anymore.’

‘The goalie is the most important person on the field,’ said attackman Mike Powell, who scored four Syracuse goals. ‘As the goalie goes, the team goes. So if your goalie is depressed or hanging his head, your team is going to be down. When he picked it up, the whole team started playing. Jay overcame a lot of things today.’

The most important of which may have been the weather. Heavy rain made Pfeifer’s stick hard to hold early in the game. When the ball would strike the stick, the shaft would spin, allowing easy rebound opportunities or soft goals. After the first quarter, Pfeifer taped his stick so he could grip the shaft better and keep it from spinning out of control.

‘Because of the handle that he had, it was very slippery,’ SU head coach John Desko said. ‘The ball turned the head of the stick and it went in. After the first quarter we got the stick tapped up, and I think he felt a little more confident about it ‘

He also felt more comfortable thanks to an offensive run that kept Syracuse in the game even after Pfeifer’s early struggles. Down 5-2, Syracuse ran off three straight goals to tie the score.

Brian Nee started the run with a man-up goal and then let teammate Josh Coffman take over. In less than 30 seconds, Coffman bounced in a goal, grabbed a pass after Syracuse won the face-off and rocketed a low shot for the equalizer.

But perhaps Coffman’s most important goal came late in the first half. On the right side of the goal, the senior attacker slipped on the soggy grass. He went down to one knee, slid past UVa defender Mark Koontz and fired a shot that landed in the left side of the net.

‘Yeah, that was my favorite goal today,’ said Coffman of the acrobatic goal that put Syracuse up, 11-8, at halftime. ‘After that, my teammates were kind of like, ‘Whoa.’ That’s when you know you did something a little bit different. I thought that goal would give us a little bit of a cushion.’

But not enough of a cushion.

A flashy behind-the-back shot by Virginia’s A.J. Shannon found the upper-left corner of the net, causing five UVa players to mob Shannon near the goal to celebrate a 13-13 tie with six minutes left.

SU’s Spencer Wright quieted the celebration 19 seconds later with an unassisted goal to give Syracuse the lead.

In the end, though, it was Pfeifer who made the lead stand up. The freshman made two crucial saves — on one he caught a high shot and on the other he knocked away a bouncing attempt — to preserve the win.

‘We thought we could put some pressure on Pfeifer at the end of a game in a pressure situation, and maybe we could get one,’ Virginia head coach Dom Starsia said. ‘To his credit, he got better as the game went on. We had some trouble scoring on him at the end.’

‘I was nervous,’ Pfeifer said. ‘When you play in a game like that you are going to be nervous. It’s just how you handle those nerves. I did a pretty good job with that, a good enough job to help my team get a big win.’

Published on March 3, 2002 at 12:00 pm