New York Atlas Win Their First Premier Lacrosse League Championship

Moments after Xander Dickson was carried off the field in a stretcher and before he was transported to the hospital, he had a chance to see his New York Atlas teammates in the locker room at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, N.J.

The two-time Premier Lacrosse League All-Star sustained a gruesome injury to his left leg in the second quarter of Sunday’s championship game against the Denver Outlaws. After receiving medical attention, he gave the home crowd a horns-up hand gesture, then offered his teammates words of encouragement at halftime.

“He’s our brother,” said Jeff Teat, Dickson’s attack mate and the 2024 PLL MVP. “He told us, ‘Go get this thing.’ So we did.”

One of the six original PLL teams, the Atlas held off the Outlaws 14-13 to claim their first league title in front of an electric home crowd.

“It means everything,” Pressler said. “When Xander went down, that took the wind out of our sails. A major hit for us. We had a chance to see him at halftime and for us to suck it up a man short — it was a big-time gut check.”

Faceoff legend Trevor Baptiste, a New Jersey native and the lone player left from the original 2019 roster, helped fuel the victory with a 22-for-30 performance.

“I remember day one in 2019 walking into the Atlas locker room. It’s been such an amazing journey,” said Baptiste, who was the 2022 PLL MVP. “There’s been so much adversity we faced over the years and within this year. But we’ve always stayed together, always went the extra mile and it paid off. We did it.”

On Sunday, adversity arrived with 4:25 remaining in the second quarter, when Dickson’s leg got tangled with that of Outlaws goalie Logan McNaney as he gave chase up the field. He rolled over to his stomach and clutched his helmet in agony and remained on the field for several minutes before medical personnel took him to the locker room.

Rookie Matt Traynor replaced Dickson on attack and immediately contributed, scoring with 48 seconds left in the second quarter and then 20 seconds into the third quarter to stake New York to a 10-7 lead.

That lead evaporated in a matter of seconds, however. Denver’s Pat Kavanagh, Jared Bernhardt and Logan Wisnauskas — all former Tewaaraton Award winners at the collegiate level — combined to score three goals in 39 seconds.

New York retook the lead when Teat hit Reid Bowering with a behind-the-back pass from his knees on a breathtaking pick-and-slip play. The Outlaws countered with Brennan O’Neill, the fourth member of their Tewaaraton quartet, who tied it at 11 with his third goal of the game.

Denver grabbed the momentum late in the third quarter, with midfielder Graham Bundy nailing a 15-foot stepdown to make it 12-11.

The Atlas buckled down on defense in the fourth quarter, forcing a shot clock violation on the Outlaws’ first possession. Then Bowering found Traynor on the doorstep with a pass McNaney tried to intercept. Traynor caught the ball and deposited it into the open net to force the seventh tie of the game.

Then it was Bryan Costabile’s turn to take over. The second-longest tenured player on the team, Costabile reached 97 mph on a stick-side shot on the run that beat McNaney for the go-ahead goal with 6:49 remaining.

Less than two minutes later, after an apparent Jake Stevens goal was waived due to a shot clock violation, Costabile he tucked a no-angle twister inside the right pipe to put New York ahead 14-12.

Costabile almost made it a fourth-quarter hat trick, but he hit the crossbar on a shot and Bernhardt converted on a fast-break feed from Ryan Terefenko going the other way to pull Denver within one.

Atlas coach Mike Pressler challenged the call on Costabile’s shot, which if overturned would also have erased Bernhardt’s goal. The ruling on the field stood, however.

Baptiste won the ensuing faceoff and Teat had a chance to put the game away, but McNaney made a save on New York’s penultimate possession. The Outlaws had one last chance to tie the game in the final minute, but O’Neill missed on a shot and landed in the crease.

Two-time NCAA championship-winning goalie Liam Entenmann added to his trophy haul with 14 saves, including an acrobatic fourth-quarter stop on Bernhardt he made from the ground while matching sticks with the Denver dynamo.

“This is why we do it, to climb that mountain and reach the top of it,” Entenmann said. “We wake up tomorrow, the world keeps spinning. But right now, we’re going to enjoy this.”