Kurdyla, Rutgers a Match Years in the Making

Though he’s just a junior, Rutgers attackman Colin Kurdyla is about as well-versed in Scarlet Knights lore as he possibly could be.

He grew up a town over in Bridgewater, played for a high school team coached by Rutgers alums and is the son and nephew of former Scarlet Knights players himself.

He can cite the excitement of watching Rutgers thump Johns Hopkins for the first time in 26 years, the joy of witnessing the program’s steady rise and its breakthrough of making the 2022 NCAA semifinals.

And with a great deal of fondness, he recalls serving as a ball boy going back to the program’s days at Yurcak Field — a facility Rutgers last regularly called its lacrosse home in 2013.

“Being on the field, being able to see how big the players were when we were so young,” Kurdyla said. “The speed of the game, I can vividly remember those moments.”

Kurdyla is the one generating that sort of excitement in Piscataway these days. In a breakout season, he has team highs in both goals (28) and assists (24) as the Scarlet Knights (8-4, 1-2 Big Ten) head to Maryland (5-4, 2-1) on Saturday.

In some ways, Kurdyla’s mere presence at Rutgers feels predestined. Both of his parents were Rutgers athletes; Aaron played lacrosse and Erin played softball in the mid-1990s. His older brother Brady is a senior midfielder for the Scarlet Knights, while his youngest brother Declan is a midfielder committed to arrive on campus in the fall.

The entire Kurdyla family — including Cameron, now NJIT’s starting goalie as a sophomore — were fixtures at Rutgers games for years. But coach Brian Brecht didn’t take recruiting the 6-foot-2, 205-pound Colin for granted.

“I think we did a good job of introducing him to Rutgers. He knew a lot about Rutgers,” Brecht said. “I think there was a strong interest in wanting to be a Scarlet Knight. I don’t know if it’s the plan, but him and his brothers grew up around Rutgers and wanting to be Scarlet Knights.”

The effort was well worth it, and it didn’t bust the recruiting travel budget. Brecht would drive by Bridgewater-Raritan High, a New Jersey public school power whose lacrosse program is led by 1977 Rutgers grad Chuck Apel, on his way home from work. Depending on the time of year, he found himself turning off to catch Kurdyla’s football and lacrosse games.

By the time Kurdyla was heading into his junior year after the summer of 2021, Rutgers had just delivered a postseason breakthrough and reached the NCAA quarterfinals. And he was open-minded about where he would go, even with the established familiarity.

“It kind of came down to the choice between Maryland and Rutgers, and the family feel at Rutgers here with coach Brecht, having my brother already committed, it felt like home when I visited,” Kurdyla said. “That was the final factor. The locker room felt like family. The guys felt like family.”

Brecht believed he was getting a recruit prepared to play immediately, and Kurdyla delivered. He started most of his freshman year on Rutgers’ first midfield line, playing alongside Shane Knobloch while attackman Ross Scott was also a centerpiece.

Both Knobloch and Scott graduated in 2024, leaving Kurdyla as the Scarlet Knights’ top returning scorer. By the middle of last season, Brecht made the same calculation he had four years earlier with Connor Kirst. Kurdyla’s past was as a midfielder, and his professional future might be, too. But in the present, he would be an attackman.

“You need your best players on the field all the time, especially when you’re running transition and in our case this year, we’re 10-manning a lot,” Brecht said. “You have to have your best athletes, your best players on the field when you’re riding a lot more, when you’re running in transition a lot more, and oh by the way, the 6-on-6 inside the box. It just makes sense.”

The move was choppy at times, promising at others, and Kurdyla went on to enjoy a 40-point season. A hint of how settled he could become arrived in the first round of the Big Ten tournament, when he dropped four goals and two assists on Michigan.

Despite finishing 7-9, Rutgers had its offensive anchor for the next couple seasons. For his part, Kurdyla had a different position to fully master in the offseason, though he was about to receive some assistance.

“I think last year definitely took some adjustment, but I think toward the end of the year last year, I was feeling a little bit more comfortable,” Kurdyla said. “Then going into this year, having a full fall, having probably the best attackman in Rutgers coaching me up at attack, it’s definitely been a huge help.”

That would be Scott Bieda, who played for the Scarlet Knights from 2013-16 and returned to his alma mater as the offensive coordinator after a stint on Michigan’s staff.

Kurdyla was quick to enthusiastically reach out to Bieda after his hire, and for good reason. Bieda is also a Bridgewater-Raritan graduate, and Kurdyla has known Bieda for nearly his entire life.

“The Biedas and Kurdylas have always been close, and it’s surreal,” Bieda said. “It makes you hit pause sometimes a little bit when it comes to the wins and losses and how special it is to be back at Rutgers, getting a chance to coach those guys and be a mentor for those guys is incredible.”

And if the sense of family was an attraction for Kurdyla to begin with, well, somehow those bonds got even tighter with Bieda’s return.

“I can remember him when he was in high school, driving me and my brothers to Chipotle to get food,” Kurdyla said. “We would go over to his house and play pool basketball when he was in high school. Coach Bieda’s always been like an older brother to me and it’s truly, truly awesome to have him back on the Banks where he belongs.”

They’ve turned out to be an excellent complement, and Brecht believes Bieda has quickly helped Kurdyla polish his game since the fall. Another boost came from Kurdyla’s U.S. U20 National Team experience in the World Lacrosse U20 Championship last summer in South Korea.

The time around other talented players on the national team roster was invaluable, but so were some intangible opportunities.

“I think that’s where Colin has exploded, just his leadership, being able to make people around him better, his communication on the field, his energy and just his competitive spirit he brings,” Bieda said. “You guys don’t get to see it. You get to see the game day and the bright lights, but he’s like that all the time.”

Certainly, some of it stems from a hunger to vault Rutgers back into the NCAA tournament for the first time in four years and establish the Scarlet Knights as a perennial top-10 program. It’s a desire Kurdyla acknowledges is widespread in the team’s locker room.

But tied to that is something he now shares with a previous generation of Scarlet Knights in his family, not to mention his older brother. It’s a different time than when his dad and uncles played for the program, but they’re now fully tied to the same place Kurdyla has spent so much of his life around.

“I would call it a true family experience being at Rutgers,” Kurdyla said. “Just being able to all be Rutgers men and share a love and a connection for one place and one team, it’s been truly special.”