Notre Dame’s offseason was supposed to be marked by promise, with the nation’s top recruiting class readying to make its first trip to South Bend for the fall. However, the Irish program made headlines for a different reason in June.

That’s when junior attackman Ryder Garnsey requested and was granted his release from the program, a move coming from a player that led the team with 43 points last season. Although Garnsey did not explicitly address his reasons for looking elsewhere, coach Kevin Corrigan admitted he could have communicated more effectively with his star player.

“Ryder wasn’t sure how he felt about some things and he expressed that and he took a look around,” Corrigan said. “What I took away is that Ryder needed to resolve, in his mind, and accept what we’re asking him to do. I need to be better at ongoing communication with these guys to make sure that we don’t get to a point where someone feels like they want to look into transferring.”

With the prospect of Garnsey playing at another school — he reportedly considered fellow ACC rival Virginia — the outlook for the 2018 season looked different. Already without Sergio Perkovic, the three-time All-American who graduated in 2017, Garnsey and fellow attackman Mikey Wynne provided the veteran presence to help the Irish continue the momentum on offense.

The loss of Perkovic, and then possibly Garnsey, presented a potential challenge for the Irish offense. But Corrigan said he couldn’t worry about who he wasn’t bringing back, 

“You start over every year,” he said. “You don’t think about the last game we played or the last lineup we had, who are we replacing, what are we doing. You start with ‘What do we have right now?’”

It’s a mindset that Corrigan had to have going into the fall, but he was certainly happy to see that, just weeks after his release was granted, Garnsey announced via Twitter that he was returning to Notre Dame.

pic.twitter.com/UYKCDmvEHY

— Ryder Garnsey (@rsgarnz) June 30, 2017

Back is a crucial part of the Irish’s success last season, which ended with a loss to Denver in the NCAA Quarterfinals. Pair Garnsey and Wynne with middies Brendan Gleason and Bryan Costabile, and Notre Dame returns six of its top seven scorers from 2017.

Reinforcements also come in the form of the top recruiting class, which took part in the 19-day fall season. The 14-player class was headlined by defenseman Arden Cohen, the No. 3 overall recruit, and included long-stick midfielder Carson Cochran and attackman Mikey Drake.

Corrigan didn’t do anything differently with this class during the fall season— one that included a win against Team Canada in Buffalo on Oct. 8 and a New York City networking trip. Although it’s early, there are more than a few members of this class that will play a role with the 2018 team.

“We have a number of guys that will contribute,” Corrigan said of his freshman class. “That was the case last year and the year before that and the year before that, when I look at those rosters. We’ve got a kid at every position on the field that could conceivably compete for playing time.” 

Despite the fall scrimmage schedule being cut short after the wildfires in Northern California cancelled a meeting with Harvard on Oct. 14, Corrigan and his Notre Dame program have reloaded. He’ll be happy to welcome back the nine players that missed time during the fall due to injury, helping make this team even deeper — a tough sight for the rest of the Division I men’s lacrosse.

About Notre Dame

• Coach: Kevin Corrigan

• Last Seen: Falling to Denver and a dominant Trevor Baptiste 16-4 in the NCAA quarterfinals.

• Key Returners: Ryder Garnsey (20G, 23A), Mikey Wynne (33G, 4A), Brendan Gleason (25G, 6A), John Sexton (46 GB, 23 CT), Drew Schantz (6G, 20 GB)

• Team Stats: 10.53 goals per game (30th in NCAA DI), 9.80 goals allowed per game (24st), 12.47 turnovers per game

• Last Nike/US Lacrosse Ranking: No. 8

• Conference Snapshot: Notre Dame finished in the middle of the ACC pack last season, but regular season champ Syracuse and tournament winners North Carolina both lost key pieces. With a Virginia program on the rise and a Duke team with Tewaaraton candidate Justin Guterding returning, the ACC will be up for grabs, and the Irish should compete throughout the conference season.

OFFSEASON HOT TOPICS

The NCAA men’s lacrosse rules committee is allowing teams to experiment with a shot clock this fall. The committee is also discussing several other aspects of the game, including whether to allow attackmen to leave their feet to score around the crease. Corrigan gives his feedback on these hot topics in the men's game, as well as the new recruiting realities since the landmark legislation passed, which prohibits college lacrosse coaches from communicating with prospective student-athletes until Sept. 1 of their junior year of high school.

• 60-Second Shot Clock: “I don’t think that works. I don’t think anybody actually spent a lot of time coaching their team on the nuances and coaching points of playing a 60-second shot clock and how that’s going to affect the tempo that you play with, the schemes that you use, your substitution patterns. I don’t know of a coach that really spent any time doing that. They just spent some time playing with a 60-second clock.”

• The Dive: “I don’t worry about it from an injury standpoint, because you’re not diving into the goalie. There’s not much future in that just from a scoring standpoint. It’s a really, really hard play for officials to call and I think that’s why we outlawed it in the first place, because they were having a nightmare of a time trying to discern what was a dive and what was a push. I’m not sure I have a strong enough opinion on it one way or the other.”

• New Recruiting Realities: “The change for this year was minimal, just because of the number of kids that were already committed. One thing is that it makes you more focused when you go out to recruit. Yeah, we’d like to look at the 2020s, because that’s the group that we’re going to have to be preparing Sept. 1 to begin communicating with and make decisions on. Maybe this is just me being an old fart, but I feel like one of the best things that we did in making this decision and pushing this legislation was we gave the power back to the kids and their families. They can be more deliberate and intentional in their decision making because they’re more mature and more able to make a better decision.”

SOCIAL SNAPSHOT

Sacred Heart is getting after it in the weight room, making sure to celebrate Halloween in the meantime.

Great costumes for this year’s Lift-O-Ween #piopride pic.twitter.com/Dnb39wZ0W5

— SHU Men's Lacrosse (@SHUmenslax) October 30, 2017

Maryland lacrosse gives us Part 2 of the video series chronicling the Terps' busy fall season.