On a misty, cloudy Monday morning in Buffalo in late September, a couple dozen of the absolute best lacrosse players in the United States competed on a back field nestled into an industrial complex.
Freight trains rolled by in the background in front of an abandoned factory dotted with broken windows. The bright green turf was an oasis among the brick, concrete and gravel surrounding them. There were no television cameras. No spectators. Nothing on the line, but you never would have known it.
In just a couple hours, 12 of those players would cross the border to represent the United States at the Pan-American Sixes Lacrosse Championship in Oshawa, Ontario. The other 12 would go home. The split had already been decided, so this scrimmage meant nothing. Except it did.
Players at this level are born to compete and when their final scrimmage of a three-day training camp resulted in a tie, there was unanimous consent from the team of players going to Canada and the players that would be going home that they wanted to play overtime. So, they did.
That competitive spirit will be on display this weekend for the second edition of the Atlas Cup – a three-day international showcase at USA Lacrosse headquarters from Oct. 23-25 featuring the men’s and women’s national teams from Canada, the Haudenosaunee Nationals, Ireland and the United States.
Atlas Cup
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At the training camp in Buffalo, the players going home pulled out the win, avenging a loss from the day before. Chris Kavanagh scored the game-winner.
It wasn’t the last time a Kavanagh would come up clutch with the game on the line.
Since the introduction of the sixes discipline five years ago, the U.S. had beaten the Canadian men just once, during a round-robin Super Sixes event at USA Lacrosse headquarters in 2021 when everyone was getting their first taste of the 6v6 rapid-fire version of the sport set to be contested in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
Ever since, it’s been all Canada.
The Canadians thumped the U.S., 23-9, in the gold medal game of The World Games 2022 in Birmingham, Ala. Last year saw a five-goal loss for the Americans at the Atlas Cup in Maryland and a four-goal loss in the finals of Super Sixes in Canada.
“Obviously they’ve had our number,” Pat Kavanagh, Chris’ older brother said. “They’ve had every country in the world’s number in the sixes discipline.”
The players knew the history. U.S. head coach Andy Shay certainly knew the history, being on the sidelines for each of those losses. Still, this Pan-American championship was just one step toward the bigger goal of winning gold when lacrosse returns to the Olympic Games as a medal sport for the first time in 120 years.
“This whole fall we’re going to give as many guys a look as we can,” Shay said during the training camp. “We want to compete and we want to win when we go out against anybody, but the biggest thing is down the road we want to make sure we get the right guys. The key for us is making sure every guy in the pool gets enough of a look and it’s going to hopefully give us the best team.”
To that end, seven of the 23 players that participated in the training camp were playing sixes for the U.S. for the first time ever. Four of them — Danny Logan, Aidan Maguire, Andrew McAdorey and Joey Spallina — would go over to Canada for their first sanctioned international sixes games.
Spallina ended up leading the tournament with 18 goals and 30 points. U.S. National Team veteran Michael Sowers joined him on the all-tournament team.
The top five teams from this international qualifier earned a spot in next year’s inaugural World Lacrosse Sixes Championship in Colorado Springs. As expected, the U.S. cruised in the early going — big wins over Chile, Puerto Rico and Jamaica — and as expected, a USA-Canada gold medal game awaited.
The U.S. fell behind 4-1 early, fought back to tie it, only to go down again. The U.S. never had the lead but stayed within striking distance. And that was all they needed.
Canada led 11-10 with under a minute to play and Ian MacKay had the ball on a breakaway. Matt Campbell sprinted back on defense to force MacKay to his right and U.S. goalie Liam Entenmann reached back across his body to make a fantastic save.
MacKay ran into Entenmann in the crease, resulting in a delayed penalty and Coulter Mackesy scored at the other end to tie the game. On the power play, Pat Kavanagh got free at the top of the box and ripped home the game-winner with 1.5 seconds left.
It was the only time the U.S. led in the game.
“I kept thinking this morning you get what you deserve,” Shay said on the field after the victory. “You don’t deserve necessarily to win, but I just wanted them to win because everybody in the player pool has been working their tail off. People behind the scenes are doing so many things to move this thing forward. I just hope a lot of people can share in this.”
“You don’t realize how big the monkey [on your back] is, but it’s pretty big,” he added. “They’re the No. 1 team in the world. That’s a great win.”
Now it’s onto the Atlas Cup, the second of three international sixes events in this fall. Thirty players will report to USA Lacrosse on Tuesday for a training camp, including the 12 who captured the Pan-American championship.
Campbell and Spallina are also part of the Atlas Cup roster, which otherwise features national team staples like Blaze Riorden, Brennan O'Neill and Ryan Terefenko. For O'Neill, the 2023 world championship MVP in the field discipline, it marks his international sixes debut.
The U.S. plays Ireland on Friday (8:30 p.m. EDT), Canada on Saturday (7 p.m. EDT) and Haudenosaunee on Sunday (12 p.m. EDT). Broadcasts of the games will air live on the USA Lacrosse YouTube channel and iHeart Media.
