Pat Spencer, a three-time Tewaaraton Award finalist, is finally taking home the trophy.

Spencer, the Loyola senior attackman who set the NCAA Division I record for career assists (231) and ranks No. 2 on the all-time points list (380) behind only two-time Tewaaraton winner Lyle Thompson, was announced as the winner of the 2019 award Thursday at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Grant Ament (Penn State), Jared Bernhardt (Maryland), TD Ierlan (Yale) and Michael Sowers (Princeton) were the other Tewaaraton finalists. All five were on hand for the ceremony.

Ament, Bernhardt, Ierlan and Sowers all return in 2020.

Spencer broke his own school and Patriot League record with 114 points as a senior, his last season culminating in a six-goal, five-assist performance against Penn State in the Greyhounds’ 21-14 NCAA quarterfinal loss to Penn State. A first-round draft pick in both the Premier Lacrosse League (No. 1 overall) and Major League Lacrosse, Spencer intends to put his professional lacrosse career on hold and use his last year of NCAA athletic eligibility to play Division I basketball.

“I just want to say thank you to the game of lacrosse,” Spencer said in concluding his acceptance speech Thursday. “I didn’t think the day would come that I’d have to say goodbye to college lacrosse, but this isn’t the end. These truly have been the best four years of my life.”

Spencer is the first Loyola player to win the prestigious Tewaaraton Award, which is college lacrosse’s version of the Heisman Trophy. Joe Fletcher and Mike Sawyer were finalists in 2014 and 2012, respectively. Spencer himself was a finalist in 2017 and 2018.

“Pat has lived in a fishbowl since his freshman year. Watching him handle those moments both on and off the field has been remarkable,” Loyola coach Charley Toomey said in a press release issued by the university. “The bar in our program was already high when Pat showed up, but he continued to raise it, and he leaves it as high as it ever has been.”

Also on Thursday, sisters Jacelyn and Mirabella Lazore, who were featured in US Lacrosse Magazine’s series on what it means to be Native American in the sport, were named recipients of the Tewaaraton Native American Scholarship, presented by US Lacrosse. The Lazore sisters, who play at IMG Academy (Fla.), and men’s scholarship recipient Isaiah Cree, who plays at Sierra Canyon (Calif.), are of the Mohawk nation at Akwesasne.

National Lacrosse Hall of Famer Feffie Barnhill was honored with the Spirit of Tewaaraton Award, while Karen Emas Borbee (Delaware) and Tom Sears (North Carolina) received the Tewaaraton Legends Award for their feats as two of the top players in the game during the 1980s. They too are in the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.