After Syracuse beat Cornell to advance to the second round of the NCAA tournament last season, Matt Stith had three days to get to Richmond, Va.

Stith is a third-string goalie that doesn’t travel with the team, and had a broken foot that also kept him in Syracuse during the tournament.

Still, he had to cheer his team on, so he, the injured Skylar Thomas and Trevor Alexander mapped out a trip. After a long bus ride to New York City, a train to Stith’s home in Montclair, N.J., and an eight-hour drive with a short pit stop in Maryland, the three arrived at Sports Backers Stadium.

In what came as a complete surprise to the team, Stith, Thomas and Alexander stood in the front row and “made sure to get rowdy” throughout the match. Even after stadium officials confiscated their noisemakers, Stith wasn’t derailed.

Shifting his weight onto one of his crutches, he vehemently waived a Syracuse flag that was attached to the other.

“The flag and the crutch,” Stith said laughing, “that’s what we were known for.”

Stith, a redshirt sophomore in his second playing season, has never seen the field for the Orange (8-4-1, 2-4-1 Atlantic Coast). Stuck behind goalies Alex Bono and Andrew Coughlin on the team’s depth chart, the prospect of never playing a collegiate game doesn’t bother Stith. Instead, he focuses his energy on keeping his teammates loose with motivational speech and unrelenting eccentricity.

“He livens everything up,” said sophomore forward Ben Ramin. “He’s at the center of a lot of what we’re doing, and the heart and soul of this team.”

On the first day of preseason, Stith gathered everyone around him in the weight room.

His first pep talk of the season sent a group of players, many of whom were meeting each other for the first time, into hysteria. When head coach Ian McIntyre found his team jumping around Stith, he calmed them down with a reminder that there was still practice later in the day.

“I started talking about how last year we shocked the world but now we’re the hunted,” Stith said. “I said ‘Everyone wants to take our name from us so let’s protect it,’ and then we were just all screaming.”

In practice, Stith is competitive, but also keeps things loose. He explained that in drills, it’s the three goalies against the rest of the team, and that it’s exciting when they keep the ball out of the net.

After a big save, he likes to let the forwards know who came out on top. Bono said he’s seen Stith dunk a soccer ball on the crossbar, chest bump teammates and pump his chest, and that’s just the start of his laundry list of celebrations.

Stith’s favorite is when all three goalies raise their hands in the air and let out a low grunt in unison — something they saw the blockers on the women’s volleyball team do.

“He gets excited about every moment,” Bono said, “and he really just loves being on the field every day, and cherishes those moments.”

Just because Stith isn’t going to play, his excitement isn’t diminished on game day. From the bench, he is always encouraging and the first to volunteer to warm up a teammate.

After his redshirt season in 2011, he won the Dean Foti Award for having the most positive effect on the team’s attitude. At the end of last season, he won the Syracuse Coaches’ Award for courage, humility and devotion to his teammates.

To recognize him this season, McIntyre brought him on the team’s trip to Boston College. Bono said that if it were up to him, “Stith would come on every trip,” and Stith felt the same.

But whether or not he travels with the team is trivial. Stith’s presence is felt wherever the Orange goes, even if it’s a bus, train or eight-hour car ride away.

“On the field he’s always getting behind you and telling you what you’re doing wrong and giving you that positive encouragement,” Bono said. “He is someone who I credit my improvement for and a lot of my success because of how he pushes me everyday.”

Published on October 15, 2013 at 11:53 pm

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse