When the Syracuse University field hockey team earned the first NCAA championship for any women’s program in that school’s history, two recent Liverpool High School graduates had a part in it.
Emma Lamison, a junior, emerged as one of the team’s top goal-scorers and offered the game-clinching goal in the Nov. 22 final against North Carolina, a 4-2 victory. Also, freshman Megan Evangelista helped out in goal behind Sauquoit Valley’s Jess Jecko.
Lamison had transferred from Northeastern University in Boston, where she spent her first two years in college following a successful career at Liverpool that included a school-record 122 points, including 61 goals (which count for two points) and 50 assists.
With Emma going to SU, it enhanced the Lamison family’s athletic legacy. All three of her older sisters had played college athletics, with Beth Lamison preceding Emma with a three-year field hockey stint at SU from 2007 to 009.
She joined an Orange squad bent on to atoning for its 1-0 defeat to Connecticut in the 2014 national championship game at College Park, Maryland. Evangelista was on hand, too, having helped Liverpool go all the way to the state championship game in 2013 and finished with 292 career saves, also playing goal in lacrosse for the Warriors.
Neither Lamison nor Evangelista could imagine the path SU would take toward a first-ever national title.
No one beat the Orange in 16 regular-season games as it rose to no. 1 in the national rankings. Despite the tough competition in the Atlantic Coast Conference, SU kept ringing up victories, and Lamison didn’t take long to make an impact, netting a goal in her debut Aug. 28 against Stanford and adding two-goal outings against Pacific (Aug. 31) and Cornell (Oct. 4).
In a bit of foreshadowing, Lamison would assist on the game-winning tally when SU first confronted North Carolina on Sept. 12, one of four assists on the season to go with nine goals, which ranked fourth on the team behind Alma Fenne (19 goals), Emma Russell (15 goals) and Roos Wears (14 goals).
Of course, the Orange and Tar Heels were far from done with each other. During the ACC Tournament at Charlottesville, Virginia, SU had to get past host Virginia 3-2 in overtime to reach the finals against UNC, only to finally take a defeat to the Heels 2-1, again in OT.
With its unbeaten mark spoiled, SU still had a national championship to go after. Hosting the regional round on Nov. 14-15 at Coyne Stadium, the Orange rolled past Massachusetts 4-2 and Princeton 5-0, earning a trip to the final four, played amid the snow at the University of Michigan’s home turf.
And the semifinal brought a rematch of the 2014 title game with UConn. This time, though, SU would get on the board just two minutes into the game on Fenne’s goal, added a tally from Russell later in the half and, with Fenne converting again with less than five minutes left, prevailed 3-1, ending the Huskies’ 38-game win streak.
Awaiting in the final was, again, North Carolina, who had blanked Duke 2-0 in the other semifinal. Russell got the Orange on the board 8:30 into the game, and Fenne made it 2-0, but the Tar Heels roared back in the second half, tying it, 2-2, on Malin Evert’s goal with 14:08 to play.
SU regrouped, and off a penalty corner with 11:21 left, Zoe Wilson netted her first goal of the season. Then, with 6:18 to play, another Orange rush left Lamison situated in front of the net and, taking a pass from Russell on the right side, she put it into the net.
Jecko, who started all 22 games in goal this season while mentoring Evangelista, stopped UNC’s Nina Notman on a penalty stroke as time wound down, and moments later, the Orange were celebrating a long-awaited NCAA championship.
