M
ackenzie Borbi was flustered. She couldn’t beat Delaney Jackson.
It was 2022, and Borbi had just begun her freshman year at Shawnee High School (New Jersey), which was off to its best start in six years. On April 14, she notched a hat trick and controlled seven draws in a 10-5 rout of Moorestown. Everything was clicking. But two days later, she was suddenly suppressed.
Jackson, Cherokee High School’s draw specialist, gave Borbi a rude awakening. She held Borbi to one draw win — taking five — and handed the Renegades their first loss.
Mike Jackson, Jackson’s father, looked on from the sidelines. He watched his daughter annihilate Borbi, whom he knew from a junior club event. After the season, when Mike became Shawnee’s assistant coach, he took Borbi aside.
“He told me that she was a ‘big dog’ and I was a ‘little pup’ compared to her,” Borbi said. “It always stuck in my head that, even though I was a freshman, I’m not playing like a freshman. I can go against the ‘big dog.’”
Now the Renegades’ head coach, Mike’s seen her destiny unfold in southern New Jersey before. Twice, actually.
He watched his daughter end her illustrious Cherokee career with 363 controls in three years before she left for Loyola. Two years before, it was McKenzie Blake at Haddonfield, who won 143 tieups as a senior before departing for Princeton.
Mike doesn’t often get the feeling that he’s found the next great draw specialist. But he immediately sensed it when he saw Borbi.
“That was the run of these three legendary midfielders out of South Jersey,” Mike said.
Borbi — Inside Lacrosse’s No. 22 recruit in the class of 2025 and Syracuse’s top-ranked freshman — rewrote the Shawnee record books, continuing the timeless tradition of high-quality South Jersey midfielders on the draw control. She sits atop the Renegades’ throne, setting their season-high and career-high draw wins record with 172 and 555, respectively.
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But unlike Blake, Jackson or any draw specialist in South Jersey, much of Borbi’s athletic prowess stemmed from her background as a soccer goalie.
“Even though it’s a completely different position, (soccer) helped out a lot,” Borbi said. “Being quick off my feet helps with dodging in lacrosse.”
In her four seasons at Shawnee, Borbi accumulated a program-record 316 saves, taking the starting job from senior Ava Rieger late in her freshman season. Borbi paralleled her lacrosse hardware, becoming the All-South Jersey Goalkeeper of the Year in 2023. No Shawnee player had ever notched 19 shutouts in a season before she did in 2024, leading the Renegades to a 25-0 state title-winning campaign.
“I think she could go to most Division I colleges and make the team,” Shawnee girls soccer head coach Drew Wagner said. “I’ve been coaching girls soccer for 23 years. She’s the best keeper I have ever seen.”
But Borbi was set on prioritizing her lacrosse dreams. When she was 6, Borbi started retrieving ground balls with her father, Patrick Borbi, playing with a rebounder and using a radar gun in their backyard. Patrick and his wife, Rachel Borbi enjoyed watching their daughter play lacrosse much more than soccer.
Borbi joined her club team, All American Aim, when she was 8. She graduated last year as its longest-tenured member, playing with the fourth-grade squad a year before an appropriate age group was available. Despite her unparalleled athleticism, club director Katie Lee said she needed some tune-ups to refine her skills beyond draws in sixth grade.
“Her conditioning wasn’t necessarily where it needed to be at that time to run true middie,” Lee said. “She jokes with me pretty often about the conversation we had and how it really flipped a switch in her to be that true two-way middie, which is pretty hard to find in the game nowadays.”
During a 2019 summer tournament, Borbi showed off her revamped conditioning. After All American Aim conceded possession when a player fell, she covered 20 yards within seconds as the opposition pushed the ball upfield. Borbi stole it back and buried it in the back of the net.
“Mackenzie always had the raw talent that you can’t teach. There was always something innate in her,” said All American Aim defensive coach Paige Beierschmitt.
Her encounter with Jackson was a humbling start to her time at Shawnee. But as a freshman, Borbi was still its third-best scorer, tallying 31 goals. She recovered from the early-season hiccup and won six or more draws in a seven-game span late in the season. Borbi set herself up to smash Shawnee’s all-time single-season draws record with 116 victories.
Mackenzie Borbi (left) poses with Virginia transfer Cece Webb in one of SU’s offseason practices. Borbi, a five-star recruit, is poised to take on a large role in her freshman campaign on the draw. Courtesy of SU Athletics
The Renegades were primed for a storied run in the 2022 NJSIAA Girls Lacrosse Tournament, winning the first two playoff games by double digits. But Borbi broke two ribs in the semifinal round against Ocean City. She wore a protected guard that her teammate Abby Davidson said looked like a “bulletproof vest.” Borbi remained stoic, scoring twice to help advance Shawnee to the final. Though the Renegades fell to Moorestown 9-5, Borbi had no regrets.
“The sheer amount of stretch that her body can handle — it’s unbelievable,” Beierschmitt said. “She can turn it into a different gear that not many people can do.”
With Mike joining the staff under former Shawnee head coach Julie Cancila, Borbi received the proper coaching to improve upon her excellent freshman play, and she did.
“I don’t think at that point she knew how good she could be,” Mike said.
Nobody could figure Borbi out on the draw, with her school-record 172 controls in her sophomore year, and that gave her a resume suited for Atlantic Coast Conference lacrosse. Her school records outclassed Blake and Jackson’s high school performances.
Borbi was fulfilling Mike’s prophecy by being South Jersey’s next big thing on the draw. When she pledged to the Orange, she became the lone one of the three in the pipeline to commit to an ACC program. But there was a catch.
Blake and Jackson began their freshman seasons with the same head coach who recruited them. But after SU narrowly fell to No. 7 seed Yale in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, former head coach Kayla Treanor departed for Penn State.
“It was definitely scary,” Borbi said. “And I think everybody could agree that you don’t know who’s coming in, so you kind of feel unsettled, like you don’t know what you’re going to do.”
National Signing Day was much earlier in her senior year, and she had minimal flexibility with summer camps approaching. Reagan O’Donovan, a 2026 SU goalie commit, followed Treanor to the Nittany Lions, and captain Olivia Adamson had her eyes set on Northwestern for her final year of eligibility. Borbi was stuck.
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But when Syracuse swooped up alums Regy Thorpe and Nicole Levy to serve as its head coach and assistant, the pitch was even more intriguing for Borbi. She also clicked with fellow incoming freshmen, who were in a similar situation. Borbi played Fortnite with them and bonded through making vision boards.
There’s a glaring vacancy on SU’s draw control. Kate Mashewke graduated two years ago, following her record-setting 234-win senior season. Adamson posted a team-high 107 the year prior. Syracuse’s specialist in 2025, Meghan Rode, only posted 75, the fewest by a team leader since the pandemic-abridged 2020 season.
Mike’s genie-esque projections have proved credible thus far. He and Borbi know her goal isn’t to be like Blake or Jackson, though. The only closure she needs is knowing she’s the “big dog.”
She’ll have Feb. 24 circled on her calendar when Loyola visits the JMA Wireless Dome. Jackson as a junior, and Borbi as a freshman. They meet each other in the middle, and it’ll feel just like it did four years ago when they rotated the draw circle, staring into the other’s soul before doing battle.
“Once you stop playing like a freshman, you start actually playing like the way you want,” Borbi said. “It doesn’t matter that she’s older than me. No matter who I’m up against, I can do better than them, regardless of age.”
Photos courtesy of SU Athletics
Published on January 29, 2026 at 12:00 am