Dylan Donahue isn't keen on stepping into the limelight, but as SU's first 50-goal scorer in 24 years, it's exactly what he'll do
About 50 yards off the shores of Otisco Lake, Kevin and Dylan Donahue let the early evening breeze navigate their undersized, metal flat-bottom fishing boat.
Equipped with a couple of downriggers, rubber worms and a fish finder, it was all they needed to ease the sting of a NCAA tournament quarterfinals loss to Johns Hopkins that was hardly two weeks old.
“We just needed to occupy some time,” said Kevin Donahue, Dylan’s father and a Syracuse assistant coach.
The Orange graduated 70 percent of its starting lineup, including five of its six top scorers. Donahue is the lone holdover. So as father and son waited in their usual spot for the bass to bite, they didn’t talk about lacrosse. They found something else.
The leaky roof in their 150-plus year-old house on Otisco Lake that requires an array of pots and pans to counter. Trolling for walleye instead of waiting for bass. Last night’s tortellini soup. Anything else, just not lacrosse.
“Nothing really needed to be said,” Donahue said.
While the subject was easy to deflect on that evening in early June, Donahue is now on the doorstep of his final season. As humbly as he might fend off the perception he won’t have to be the focal point of Syracuse’s offense, there’s no denying that role for the 5-foot-9 attack who led SU with 50 goals last season, the most scored by a Syracuse player since 1991.
He’s driven by a unique perception of the game, blending his incessant work ethic in a lacrosse-oriented family, experience playing behind former offensive quarterback Kevin Rice and a keen spatial awareness on the field that suits him perfectly to serve as the conductor this season.
He’d just prefer to stay out of everyone’s way while doing it.
I don’t really like the spotlight that much. I just kind of really like to play lacrosse.Dylan Donahue
In the confines of the Donahue’s home in Camillus, New York, nearly every room is inhabited by a bed, dresser, armoire or table made out of cheap pine. Kevin put his woodworking skills to use as a young father looking to save money with his wife.
It took 22 years for Kevin to share that passion with his youngest son, but eventually the duo settled on a foosball table over Winter Break. They hid in the basement for hours on end, dismantling parts off an old model they picked up from a bar.
They made use of the old rods, bearings and figurines, which now floated above a scaled-down lacrosse field designed by Donahue and inspired by the Carrier Dome’s look, with a block orange “S” at midfield.
Courtesy of Kevin Donahue
Dylan and Kevin Donahue built this foosball table over Winter Break using parts from a broken one.
Under his father’s tutelage, Donahue built the wood-stained oak cabinet that supported the refurbished playing surface. But more so, the tangible site of something he built struck a cord.
“You just work hard and try to prove it yourself that you can do it,” Donahue said. “You look at something you want to make, and once you’re done you get to appreciate it.”
Donahue can perceive the product he wants to construct on the field. It unfolds like the way he helped build the foosball table: rigging together old parts — senior midfielders Sergio Salcido and Tim Barber — with new ones like transfers Nick Piroli and Nick Mariano to create something of value.
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He hopes to run an offense based on the hockey assist. An offense Kevin Donahue explained ran off at least two passes before a shot. Kevin Donahue swears the best game of his career was one that involved no goals or assists.
He was the player that set up his teammate to get an assist, who in turn was the player to set up his teammate to score. A domino-effect system balances out the stat sheet and worked flawlessly last year behind the play-calling of Rice. With four players scoring at least 29 goals, Syracuse ranked as the nation’s second-highest scoring offense.
It’s difficult to imagine the same script materializing this year with 63 percent of last year’s points gone. Donahue’s 19 percent remains, and the onus is on him to lay the foundation for his project.
He knows, the team knows and the coaches know that he’s the guy and he’s going to be the guy.Kevin Rice
Building is a relatively new concept to Donahue, but he’s long had a vision. Working in her son’s elementary school classes, Laurie Donahue was taken aback to see her sports-consumed child not only sitting still, but drawing.
The basement walls of their Camillus home have since been splattered with Donahue’s scenic landscapes. Even more drawings were given out as Christmas gifts last year.
Courtesy of Kevin Donahue
In high school Dylan Donahue drew a lacrosse stick with 10 oranges on it — one for each of Syracuse’s national championships at the time.
He’s simply able to observe, visualize and execute. In most cases that’s happened in a chair facing an easel, but it’s translated into what Rice calls an “uncanny” spatial awareness. The former SU attack said in jest he’s not once seen Donahue in the wrong spot on a play.
His complex perception will come to a head this season as he tries to balance sliding himself into scoring windows like years past, but orchestrate his teammates’ positioning as well.
“Dylan understands that it’s not just what’s in front of him,” Kevin Donahue said. “It’s what’s behind him and what’s over there.”
What stands in front of him is a final chance. Not necessarily to improve his team-leading numbers from last year, but to adapt his perceived role from finisher to creator.
Behind him stands more inexperienced, yet talented pieces like Mariano and Jordan Evans, who Donahue will try to relay his perceptions to, grooming them as the team’s future ringleaders.
And over there is the NCAA championship game on May 30, in Philadelphia. The final win that’s proved elusive to Donahue, the one he can’t possibly perceive missing again.
