CAMILLUS – West Genesee has turned to two famous names from its not-that-distant past in the hopes that they can both bring newfound glory to programs accustomed to it.
Eric Burns is the new varsity boys lacrosse coach, replacing Shaun Smith, while Shannon Musak comes back to Camillus to take over the varsity girls lacrosse team after Drew White stepped down.
In the case of Burns, WG didn’t have to look too far, since he has spent the last three seasons as the Wildcats’ junior varsity head coach and, before that, coached the freshman team, while also in the winters serving as an assistant ice hockey coach.
He is also the latest example of a player working under the tutelage of coaching legend Mike Messere and going on to the coaching ranks himself, having earned All-American status while playing for several WG championship teams in the late 1990s.
One of a half-dozen candidates for the head coaching job, Burns was vacationing with his wife and three children in the Adirondacks when he was summoned for an interview last week, driving back home to do the interview in person – which proved successful.
Unlike Burns, Musak was not already on WG’s staff of coaches, serving as an assistant to Leah Tuck at one of the Wildcats’ great rivals, Fayetteville-Manlius, when she was chosen to return home.
But it was Musak who, in her high school days, helped the Wildcats program reach new heights, contributing to three consecutive state Class A championship teams from 2001 to 2003.
Following her college career at the University of Connecticut, where she was a second-team All-American and three-time first-team All-Big East selection, Musak returned to Central New York, where she coached youth teams and also spent time at Syracuse University as the women’s lacrosse team’s director of operations.
Overall, WG’s girls have claimed seven state titles, augmenting the 15 claimed by Messere’s boys teams over the course of the last four decades.
Under Smith, the boys Wildcats went a combined 18-18 in the 2019 and 2021 seasons, both times dropping sectional finals to Baldwinsville.
Meanwhile, White’s girls teams maintained winning records but couldn’t quite claim sectional honors, falling to B’ville in the 2019 title game and to eventual champion Cicero-North Syracuse in the 2021 semifinals.
