There stood the future national champion goaltender. Maybe not as he prefers to be seen, with the surfer-style necklace and shaggy-hair-do that epitomize his ‘whatever’ attitude. Jay Pfeifer is, after all, just a laid-back dude from the ‘burbs of Baltimore.

Last May 25, though, he was anything but laid back. He gripped a goalie stick in his hands, a helmet smothered his hair, and if he wore a necklace, his No. 2 Syracuse jersey hid it.

Pfeifer was prepared for this nerve-wracking moment. He won 12 regular-season games as a redshirt freshman and outlasted Duke, 10-9, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Still, Pfeifer felt afraid. It was overtime of the national-semifinal game, and he faced a Virginia squad bubbling with talents like Joe Yevoli and John Christmas.

Then there stood Tillman Johnson, the Cavaliers’ goaltender. With his 8.67 career goals-against average, Johnson’s one of the nation’s most respected goalies. He’s got the typical goaltender attitude to boot, with his red-faced intensity and wild gestures.

‘He’s a little more spastic,’ Pfeifer offered while reflecting on the Virginia game nine months later.

A typical comment from the atypical goaltender, whose lacrosse resume, by the way, is also anything but typical. Perhaps that attitude explains how Pfeifer led Syracuse to that point, the cusp of the national championship game, and beyond.

And maybe it explains why, though Pfeifer sometimes shakes with nerves, his coaches and teammates remain confident he can do it again.

More than three months before Pfeifer faced Johnson, he sat across from SU head coach John Desko. Not on opposite ends of a lacrosse field but on different sides of a desk.

Desko had called Pfeifer to his office for a meeting. In a moment, Pfeifer would learn his future with the Syracuse lacrosse program.

Pfeifer and two other SU goaltenders — senior Alex Mummolo and sophomore Nick Donatelli — had dueled three weeks for the starting job. Desko planned a sit-down with each to announce the winner.

‘Every day was a battle,’ Pfeifer said. ‘Every shot, you had to concentrate. You were always wondering how they were doing. You’re always thinking about it. Not relaxed at all.’

Especially not with Desko, the revered coach, staring Pfeifer down, waiting to deliver his future. Pfeifer only had to look to Mummolo, who spent his first three seasons backing up All-American Rob Mulligan, for an example of the worst-case scenario.

Logic dictated Pfeifer had at least as good a shot at the starting job as his competitors.

If the Orangemen went with Mummolo, they faced the prospect of graduating a starting goalie two consecutive years after Mulligan left in 2001. Plus, though Pfeifer redshirted the 2001 season, Desko said Pfeifer would likely have replaced Mulligan if the starter were injured.

None of that eased Pfeifer’s fear when he walked into Desko’s office. He must have flashed back to high school, when he endured a similar uncertain stretch his sophomore year.

The Gilman School had five goaltenders, and days before the first game, none had established himself as a starter. So Gilman head coach Dave Allan put the five goalies in net and took five shots on each. Most saves wins.

‘Lucky for me, I was having a good day and made the most saves,’ Pfeifer said. ‘I started the first game and every other game, too.’

The straightforward Desko did things differently. No contests or gimmicks.

‘We’re gonna go with you,’ Desko told Pfeifer at their meeting. ‘Do a good job, because everyone else is close behind you.’

And the other goalies remained behind Pfeifer, who started every game.

After Pfeifer’s first start, a scrimmage against Navy, it looked like Desko would pull him before the regular season even started. Pfeifer stopped one shot and allowed five goals in 37 minutes.

‘The first couple of shots,” Pfeifer said, “I was so nervous that I couldn’t move.’

Pfeifer channeled his nervousness into quirks that both amused and befuddled his teammates and coaches.

‘Jay’s out there,’ said SU attackman Brian Nee, Pfeifer’s roommate.

‘It’s funny, some of the silly things he comes up with,’ SU defenseman Sol Bliss said. ‘It’s like, ‘How’d he think of that?’ ‘

That’s what everyone wanted to know when, before a Syracuse game against Loyola last April 6, Pfeifer stripped his sweats to reveal bright-orange football pants.

That idea was not a Pfeifer original. Former Syracuse goaltender Matt Palumb pulled the same stunt more than a decade ago. Having heard the story, teammates urged Pfeifer to try it.

‘Unfortunately, he will take up dares,’ said Pfeifer’s father, Jerry. ‘Had Desko run on the field and grabbed his neck, I wouldn’t have been surprised. When I saw Jay before the game, he said, ‘You’re going to see a surprise today.’ I had no idea what he was talking about. I thought he was going to do something in the game.’

Pfeifer might have had the pants not limited his, well, freedom.

‘I didn’t really like them that much,’ Pfeifer said. ‘They were kind of tight. Very restricting.’

Though Pfeifer ditched the pants, he’ll stick with the rest of his superstitions: having his thumb taped the same way, putting his right shoe on first and always stepping into the crease with his right foot first.

After all, they seem to work. Last season, Pfeifer finished with a 9.42 goals-against average and .540 save percentage. With little fanfare, Pfeifer help deliver Syracuse a 12-2 regular-season record.

‘But,’ Pfeifer said, ‘by the time the Final Four rolled around, I was nervous again.’

The butterflies first fluttered when Pfeifer stepped onto the Rutgers Stadium turf, looked up and saw 23,123 fans and a few television cameras staring back it him.

Things got worse. Forty-four seconds into the semifinal game, Virginia had zapped three shots past Pfeifer. Johnson, his rowdy counterpart, stood unscathed.

‘I was thinking basically about how big a chump I looked like on TV,’ Pfeifer said. ‘I was pretty nervous before that game.’

Probably during it, too. It took a goal from SU’s Tom Hardy with 25 seconds left to tie the score at 11 and send the game to overtime.

The first overtime ping-ponged. A Pfeifer save at one end. A Johnson answer at the other.

The game slowed to a painstaking crawl. Both teams called timeout every possession.

‘It sucks when they’d come down, call timeout and set up a play,’ Pfeifer said. ‘It’s hard to concentrate. A lot of stuff runs through your mind.’

Said Virginia head coach Dom Starsia: ‘The remarkable thing was so many scoring opportunities in overtime. Not very often does someone get one. The game could’ve ended any number of times.’

The game did when Hardy scored again with 32 seconds left in double overtime. The season did when, two days later, the Orangemen topped Princeton, 13-12, for the national title.

Nine months later, Pfeifer still declines to pump his fists and raise his voice when reminded of the championship. He’d rather just flash a no-big-deal smile and offer a one-liner or two.

He’d rather talk about all he’s got to do for this season. For starters: be more vocal, since Syracuse lost All-American defensemen John Glatzel and Billy St. George to graduation.

And Pfeifer knows he needs to work on those three-goals-in-44-seconds starts, too. He needs to step into the crease as the dude from Towson, Md., not the scared, 6-foot, 170-pound goalie.

‘He’s pretty laid back,’ his father said. ‘But he’s real competitive, too. That’s one of his strengths. Some people underestimate how competitive he is.’

Published on February 24, 2003 at 12:00 pm