The changes sweeping the area high school girls lacrosse coaching ranks continue as Fayetteville-Manlius is now in search of a new person to take charge of a side that’s won each of the last three Section III Class B titles.
Kelly Tormey announced Sunday that she was stepping down in order to devote her energies to her three young children after three seasons at the Hornets’ helm.
The 31-year-old Tormey took over at F-M in 2017, her legacy at the school quite secure after having helped the Hornets claim back-to-back state championships in the mid-2000s under the direction of her mother, Kathy Taylor.
At the same time, Tormey had her younger sister, Kristen Beilein, alongside as an assistant coach, and together they brought an aggressive attacking style to F-M, who quickly asserted itself among the leaders in the area in scoring offense.
Just as important was that, starting in 2017, F-M was placed into Class B for statewide competition, away from all of its Salt City Athletic Conference Metro division rivals, though it remained in the league to fight for regular-season honors.
Right away, Tormey’s teams found success. F-M’s sectional title in 2017 broke a decade-long drought, and the Hornets advanced all the way to the state final before falling to Long Island powerhouse Garden City.
Another run to sectional and regional titles followed in 2018, the Hornets paired up in the state semifinals against another Long Island school, Manhasset, who prevailed and went on to claim the state title.
Last spring, F-M again claimed regular-season SCAC Metro honors, splitting two close-fought games with Baldwinsville, who went on to the state Class A finals.
After another sectional title-game victory over Auburn, F-M easily claimed the regional title and claimed a state semifinal with Suffern before a 9-7 defeat to yet another Long Island opponent, Eastport-South Manor, in the state Class B final.
Those three defeats on the final weekend of the season accounted for one-quarter of the 12 losses Tormey’s teams faced while winning 57 games in that time span.
Tormey’s departure came just weeks after her mother, Kathy Taylor, accepted the head coaching job at Colgate University after helping Le Moyne College to the 2018 NCAA Division II title. And that followed Kristen Beilein’s husband, Patrick, moving from Le Moyne to become head men’s basketball coach at Niagara University.
This marks the third significant coaching change in Section III girls lacrosse in the last month, following the departures of Doug Sedgwick from Christian Brothers Academy and Lloyd Hamilton from Cicero-North Syracuse.
