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With Syracuse trailing by three goals against No. 1 North Carolina in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament final, freshman attack Emma Ward gathered a missed shot behind the net and restarted the play. Ward looked to the left side of the attack and drove into the 8-meter, which forced sophomore midfielder Emma Tyrrell to cycle out of Ward’s area.

Ward tried to isolate her defender but realized she was stuck and looked for a passing option. While Ward shuffled around the 8-meter, Tyrrell tried to shake free of All-American defender, Emma Trenchard.

Tyrrell ran into a crowd of defenders and paused, but after seeing Trenchard ball-watching, Tyrrell sprinted toward the cage. Ward immediately dumped a pass to a streaking Tyrrell, who lowered her stick and twisted the ball down and behind her back to send the ball past Taylor Moreno’s shoulder.

“She catches the ball right-handed and then she goes with like a reverse twizzle right over the kid’s shoulder,” Tyrrell’s high school coach, Al Bertolone, said. “I mean that’s Emma.”

In her first full season for No. 3 Syracuse (14-3, 8-2 ACC), Tyrrell began the season off the bench and provided a scoring boost, coming in for Sierra Cockerille or Sam Swart. But when Megan Carney tore her ACL, head coach Gary Gait decided to move the sophomore to attack, giving Tyrrell her first career start on April 24 against Boston College. In her four starts, Tyrrell has scored 13 goals, more than any other SU player over that stretch.

A large part of Tyrrell’s success comes from her stick work, Bertolone said. Tyrrell emerged as a freshman on her high school’s varsity team as a member of the draw control unit. Bertolone noted how well Tyrrell played on the scramble and picked up loose balls, something she still excels with at SU, as she is third on the team in draw controls (31).

Initially at Mount Sinai, Tyrrell would go off the field right after the draw, but by the end of her freshman season, she began to earn her minutes and found ways to contribute offensively. Tyrrell went from a freshman finding her niche on a team to a “full-blown starter,” Bertolone said.

Bertolone also mentioned Tyrrell’s defensive success, which allowed her to hard mark opponents and take them out of the game. Tyrrell guarded players like Kerrigan Miller, a two-time All-American, now at UNC, and Kasey Choma, a midfielder at Notre Dame.

Despite her defensive capabilities, Bertolone said that the one thing that stuck out was her stick skills. Specifically, some of the tricks she was able to pull off during games.

“She was one of the first kids that I’ve had that could go behind the back and could twizzle, and she would use it all the time,” Bertolone said. “It wasn’t just flashy. It was actually substance. It was part of her game.”

The goal against UNC was an example of Tyrrell’s work in practice coming to fruition, something she worked on with Peter Van Middelem. Van Middelem has coached Tyrrell since she was 10 years old as a local youth and travel coach. He noted Tyrrell’s “unparalleled” work ethic, as she would work almost 11 months every year to improve.

Van Middelem remembers being at Christian Brothers Academy for a practice that Gait stopped by. At the time, Tyrrell’s sister, Meaghan Tyrrell, was a freshman for the Orange, but even then Van Middelem noted Tyrrell’s unique abilities with her stick.

“I just said ‘Gary, (Emma’s) stick work right now is better than her sister Meaghan, who starts for you,’” Van Middelem said.

Van Middelem noted how some of the best players in college lacrosse come from Long Island because, like Tyrrell, they grow up learning stick skills. Players practiced passing the ball against a wall and alternating hands to catch the ball.

It helped Tyrrell learn what Van Middelem called an “old-school” stick handle. It’s a reverse grip where a player has their stick in their right hand over the right shoulder. Then, instead of switching grip to her left hand, Tyrrell will cross her arm across her body and shoot over her left shoulder with her right hand. The reverse grip saves time when players are being converged on by defenders and are losing a shooting angle, Van Middelem said. He called it “old-school” because it was actually popularized by Gait during his playing days in the 1980s.

Emma Tyrrell came in for Megan Carney after she suffered a torn ACL. The sophomore midfielder has 39 points this season. Courtesy of Rich Barnes | USA Today Sports

“(Gait) kind of revolutionized the women’s game, and … we took a lot of those concepts down here in Long Island,” Van Middelem said. “That’s kind of the background of where we started switching hands, playing with both hands, being ambidextrous.”

The tactic stems from Gait being a left-handed player and choosing to use a reverse grip. Gait coached Laura Harmon at Maryland, who later coached alongside Van Middelem at a travel program on Long Island. As a result, Tyrrell grew up practicing Gait’s moves, and even now those old-school moves are a unique advantage.

“You’ll watch a lot of games, you’ll never see it,” Van Middelem said. “It’s actually something that came from that Harmon-Gary Gait world of lacrosse.”

Under Gait, Tyrrell has used her stick skills to provide an instant impact after Carney’s injury. She scored a career-high six goals in her first start and since then, Tyrrell has played a hybrid midfield and attack role.

“Right now it’s very much a microcosm of what happened at Mt. Sinai,” Bertolone said. “People are saying she’s playing attack, but she’s really playing hybrid. She’s playing a little bit of everything.”

In the past, Tyrrell has been overshadowed by higher recruited players like Choma, Jamie Ortega and Meaghan, Bertolone said. He mentioned how at Under Armour tryouts in high school, if there were 22 spots, Tyrrell would fall in the 23-25 range and just miss out.

But now, Tyrrell is starting for third-ranked Syracuse and is one of its top offensive options as the Orange head into the NCAA Tournament. Both Bertolone and Van Middelem credit her ability to improve from a draw control specialist as a freshman in high school to one of the top offensive players in the ACC.

“There were a lot of kids she’s playing against in the ACC who were the marquee players down here on the island,” Bertolone said. “She’s actually now caught up to them and she’s surpassing them a little, and I’m really, really proud of her.”

Published on May 12, 2021 at 11:21 pm

Contact Gaurav: gshetty@syr.edu