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As a pack of screaming teammates sprinted toward him, the first person Jimmy McCool saw was Carter Rice. Syracuse’s goalie had corralled a shot from Princeton midfielder Tucker Wade with 28 seconds left in last Saturday’s NCAA Quarterfinal matchup to clinch SU’s 19-18 victory over the Tigers. Pandemonium swelled afterward. McCool’s clutch stop punched the Orange’s tickets to their first Final Four since 2013.

Rice — a native of Milton, Massachusetts — instantly charged at his fellow Massachusetts man, McCool. The Boston native knew exactly why.

They earned a trip to Gillette Stadium, New England’s outdoor sports mecca.

“(Rice) looked at me,” McCool said, “and he was like, ‘We’re going home.’

“And I was like, ‘We’re going home.’”

When McCool committed to Syracuse in 2020, the first thing his father, Steve, said to his mother, Tricia, was that the Final Four in McCool’s junior year would be at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Steve thought his son would be a starter by then and dreamed of a possible homecoming. On Saturday, after McCool’s stellar redshirt sophomore season where he won the Atlantic Coast Conference Goalie of the Year award, Steve’s vision will come true.

McCool, a Boston sports die-hard, will play in the house Tom Brady built this weekend at the Final Four — a dream scenario any Southie would kill for.

Jimmy McCool attempts to stop a shot from North Carolina’s Caden Harshbarger in Syracuse and UNC’s matchup on April 26. McCool made 16 stops against the Tar Heels, part of his 204 total saves this season. Aaron Hammer | Staff Photographer

“It means so much,” McCool said of returning home this weekend. “I never tried to think about it too much during the year. We’ve had a mindset as a team and as a family of focusing on the day and what’s in front of you. But now that it’s here, I’m just so excited.”

“Jimmy is from the city, born in the city, lived in the city his whole life, and he’s just really proud to say that, ‘I’m from Boston,’” Steve added.

Unfortunately for McCool, it takes extra convincing for people to realize he’s truly from Beantown.

He doesn’t have a Boston accent.

It puzzles him. His father has spent most of his life in Boston. His mother is from Rhode Island. Still, McCool said both he and three of his four siblings never developed an accent. But it eats at him that his younger sister, Catherine, lucked into having “the strongest accent.”

“It’s so infuriating,” McCool said. “If I could change anything about myself, I would want to have that accent because it’s just so sick.”

He said he considered forcing an accent, but he instead let his Boston roots shine through elsewhere. Many of McCool’s favorite films are set in the city, such as “Good Will Hunting” and “Gone Baby Gone,” both directed by fellow Boston native Ben Affleck. He even posted a clip of Affleck’s 2010 movie, “The Town,” on X after Syracuse’s NCAA Quarterfinal victory over Princeton. McCool’s X account also features a profile picture of New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye.

https://t.co/gCcknkMG9G pic.twitter.com/k38kWOcNPc

— Jimmy McCool (@JimmyMcCool19) May 17, 2025

Per McCool, there’s nothing like the Boston sports scene. He grew up attending Red Sox games at Fenway Park, as well as Bruins and Celtics games at TD Garden. Steve recalled a young McCool sitting on his shoulders during the Bruins’ 2011 Stanley Cup parade in downtown Boston, searching for any vantage point he could find to see the players.

Though his love for the Patriots, who play in Gillette Stadium, is the strongest. Tricia said when McCool was 6 years old, his old hockey coach nicknamed him “Bruschi” — à la legendary New England linebacker Tedy Bruschi — because of his physicality. He’s been infatuated with the Patriots ever since.

McCool grew up amid the Patriots’ Brady and Bill Belichick era. So, the winning memories are countless. He’ll never forget Malcolm Butler’s goal-line interception of Russell Wilson to seal New England’s Super Bowl XLIX win over the Seattle Seahawks on Feb. 1, 2015. McCool remembers sitting on the floor in front of the couch in his family’s living room when it happened. He jumped up and nearly broke the fan on the ceiling once Butler snagged the pick.

Afterward, McCool and his younger brother, Devlin, took their shirts off and ran down the street in hysterics — a McCool brother tradition to celebrate big Boston wins.

“It was just an insane amount of excitement and juice after they won,” McCool said.

New England’s historic 28-3 comeback over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI on Feb. 5, 2017, also sticks with McCool. He remembers being at a friend’s house for a watch party. When the Patriots initially faced a 25-point deficit, one of his brother’s friends went outside, and New England scored without him watching. McCool said the kid stayed outside for the entire game as a superstition. It worked, as Brady led the Patriots to a stunning 34-28 overtime triumph.

Another win, another scene of McCool running shirtless through the streets.

“I feel like they’re spoiled … They have these winning teams,” Tricia joked. “Because when I was growing up, I didn’t.”

McCool’s past trips to Gillette Stadium don’t include many Patriots games. His best memories from the 65,000-plus-seat venue came from lacrosse. Steve took him to several Final Fours in Foxborough during his childhood, most recently in 2017.

McCool even played at Gillette Stadium as a sixth-grader after making the Massachusetts Youth Lacrosse All-Star Game. Before the game, McCool and the other All-Stars took a tour of the Patriots’ locker room. McCool said he was awestruck. He remembers that much more than his on-field appearance, however.

“That was probably not as high of a level of lacrosse as it will be this weekend,” McCool said with a chuckle.

Fast forward to last Saturday — McCool’s family was on pins and needles amid Syracuse’s battle with Princeton. Tricia couldn’t watch the back-and-forth ending, so she paced around the concourse wishing for a win. But after McCool emerged as the hero, his siblings in attendance and Steve lost their minds, though for good reason: their boy was coming home.

“We were all just hugging and crying and psyched for the moment,” Steve said. “It was quite literally a dream come true.”

The pressure may be turned up a few notches, but McCool said he doesn’t want this moment to get to him. He hasn’t shied away from big moments this year. He sure won’t this Championship Weekend, either. The stakes couldn’t be higher. The personal connection couldn’t be stronger.

Still, he’s maintaining a selfless perspective. One could say it’s simply “The Patriot Way.”

“Try not to make it bigger than it is,” McCool said of his planned mindset when he steps onto the Gillette Stadium turf Saturday. “Just being thankful that I have a lot of family and friends there supporting me, and just going out there and hoping to make a couple of saves, a couple clears and ultimately, get the win.”

Published on May 23, 2025 at 8:39 am
Contact Cooper at: ccandrew@syr.edu | @cooper_andrews