J
oey Spallina’s mind went blank as he raced around the James M. Shuart Stadium turf after sealing Syracuse’s first Final Four appearance in over a decade.
Then, he felt a tug of his jersey.
Who’s grabbing me?
It was ESPN sideline reporter Morgan Uber. One pirouette and SU’s star attackman was staring straight into a camera. The words that followed? They’re hard to forget.
“But hey, I mean, I guess I can’t dodge anybody or beat anybody,” Spallina said emphatically, after pouring in eight points to push Syracuse past No. 3 seed Princeton.
It was his moment to call out all the naysayers. The doubters. The Twitter fingers criticizing him behind burner accounts. The fans in stadiums who’ve jeered and preyed on his downfall since he was an eighth grader playing varsity for Mount Sinai High School.
Spallina let them have it. He had every right to. For the moment, he was on top of the world.
A week later, he hit rock bottom.
In the final minute of Syracuse’s 14-8 loss to Maryland at Gillette Stadium, Spallina stood alone while his team congregated during a timeout, pondering what could’ve been.
Spallina still can’t get the game out of his head. Every waking moment, he’s reminded of his one-point performance. There’s only one way to erase that memory: winning a national championship.
This season is Spallina’s last shot at glory. His final chance to etch his name among the greatest Syracuse players of all time. Fail, and Spallina might never forgive himself. He couldn’t care less about individual accolades. Being the Tewaaraton Award favorite? He shrugs his shoulders. Earning the USA Lacrosse Preseason Player of the Year? He smiles it off. Even setting the all-time points record at Syracuse? Nothing. He’ll exchange everything he has if it means hoisting the NCAA Championship Trophy come Memorial Day in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“Putting a 2026 championship banner up in the Dome is the only thing I really give a s— about,” Spallina said.
Joey Spallina raises his hands in celebration during Syracuse’s 19-18 NCAA Tournament Second Round win over Princeton. After defeating the Tigers, Spallina delivered an emphatic postgame interview on ESPN. Jacob Halsema | Staff Photographer
Spallina can say lacrosse is a team game all he wants, but whether he likes it or not, the weight falls on his shoulders. SU’s senior-laden core of Michael Leo, Billy Dwan III, Riley Figueiras and Luke Rhoa makes it a national title contender. But when a Syracuse player wears No. 22, they become the center of the lacrosse world.
If it all went to plan for Spallina, there’d already be three more championship banners hanging in the JMA Wireless Dome. It’s an unreasonable ask for any player, but that’s just how Spallina’s wired.
Losing was foreign to him before college. In his formative years, Spallina never dropped a game playing up for Team 91 Crush, alongside future Duke All-Americans Brennan O’Neill and Andrew McAdorey. He lost three games in five years at Mount Sinai. Spallina’s father Joe — the women’s lacrosse head coach at Stony Brook — joked his son lost more games (seven) in his freshman year at SU than he did his entire career.
While he hasn’t brought banners, what Spallina has ushered in is stability. The Orange were reeling in 2022 — Gary Gait’s first season as SU’s head coach — after a program-worst four wins. The previous decade under John Desko was uninspiring. SU went seven straight seasons without a Final Four.
The question of “When will Syracuse be back?” was constantly broached. As the No. 1 recruit in the class of 2022, Spallina was seen as the one to bring the Orange back into the upper echelon of college lacrosse.
Spallina helped SU improve to eight wins as a freshman, but missed the NCAA Tournament. He brought eleven wins and an NCAA Tournament Quarterfinal appearance in 2024 before last year’s Final Four berth.
However, at Syracuse, players aren’t remembered for Championship Weekend appearances. They’re defined by trophies, especially No. 22s. Gary Gait won three straight titles in the 1990s, Michael Powell won two, while his brothers Casey and Ryan each got one. Spallina knows the track record.
“Looking back on my career so far, it’s been great,” Spallina said. “But the one thing that I’m missing is obviously a championship. It’s just our main goal.”
For Spallina, 2026 is his best shot. SU lost key pieces such as attack Owen Hiltz, midfielder Sam English and defender Michael Grace, but outside of that, SU’s spine is strong. And when you have a player of Spallina’s caliber, you always have a shot.
The senior put up monster numbers in three seasons, leading SU in points each year. He finished with 90 in 2025, increasing his career total to 246. He’s only 61 points off Powell’s all-time Syracuse points record, and barring any injury, he’ll smash it.
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Despite the numbers, narratives follow Spallina’s every move. Some say he racks up points against lesser opponents. Others deride him for “disappearing” in big games. Critics rag on his playstyle, saying he’s a lackluster dodger.
It’s all a myth to Spallina and those around him.
“He’s got such a standard set for himself, expectation set for himself,” Joe told The Daily Orange. “There’s a lot of pressure from the outside, but I think he puts it more on himself than anywhere else.”
Spallina doesn’t get fazed by the criticism. Detractors have always shadowed him.
People thought he wasn’t good enough to play junior varsity as a seventh grader at Mount Sinai. Hecklers talked trash from the bleachers when he rose to varsity the next season. Spallina didn’t understand the hate. He wasn’t the one who labeled himself a “lacrosse phenom.”
All he did was produce. Spallina finished high school with 501 points, setting the all-time Long Island points record. Mount Sinai head coach Harold Drumm said he was the best player he had ever seen.
“He never went into a shell and never got intimidated by it,” Drumm said. “He just went ahead and did what Joey does, and that’s just be a better lacrosse player than the people he was playing against.”
Coming to Syracuse only exacerbated the pressure. SU’s 10 national titles are the most of any men’s lacrosse program. They’re the New York Yankees of lacrosse, as Joe put it. Like any historic sports franchise, opposing fans look at their perceived star player with contempt. One Syracuse misstep and the blame lands squarely on Spallina, setting social media ablaze.
“Where was Spallina?”
“I told you Spallina couldn’t dodge.”
“Spallina is overrated.”
Spallina laughs at the overused storylines. He thinks about former Navy SEAL David Goggins’ quote: “You’ll never see a hater doing better than you.”
His biggest gripe is with those who feel his dodging is subpar. At 5-foot-11 and 192 pounds, Spallina isn’t the most physically gifted player, nor does he have blurring speed. Spallina gets by because he’s the smartest player on the field.
He understands Syracuse’s offense is ball-movement-centric. Spallina also knows he’s at the top of every opponent’s scouting report, so sometimes he acts as a decoy. If Spallina’s asked to dodge, he will. Just look at the Princeton game, where he scampered past All-Ivy League defender Colin Mulshine three different times for scores.
Joey Spallina led the Orange with eight points in Syracuse’s NCAA Tournament win over Princeton. Spallina beat All-Ivy defender Colin Mulshine three times for goals to defeat the Tigers. Jacob Halsema | Staff Photographer
Most games Spallina lights up the box score. When he doesn’t, his impact is still felt. Joe pointed to SU’s 18-17 win over Virginia in 2024, where Spallina had zero points. It might’ve looked like a bad game on paper. But UVA never once slid off him, and he used that gravity to let teammates get favorable matchups.
“The thing that people don’t understand is no two players are the same,” Spallina said. “I think my dodging is really good. It’s just not the way our offense is. It’s a player-driven offense.”
His longtime trainer Justin Kull said memes about Spallina get shared in their group chat, and the senior jokes about them.
“The worst thing you can do is talk trash about him, because now you just gave him even more motivation,” Kull explained. “The best thing to do for anyone would just keep your mouth shut and don’t say anything to him, because all you’re doing is giving him fuel. And that fuel is not like regular fuel. It’s like nitrous, it lights him up even more and he gets more excited.”
Until Spallina wins it all, the haters won’t go away. They’ll still say he folds when it matters most. Spallina’s zero-point performance against Denver in the 2024 NCAA Quarterfinals and his dud versus Maryland don’t do him any favors.
Though the confidence in Spallina to come up big is still there.
“We just want Joey to be Joey,” Syracuse head coach Gary Gait said. “We’ve been working hard with him to handle the pressure and to kind of put that out of his mind and not force things and just play the game.”
Throughout his career, Spallina has seldom addressed the scrutiny. It’s why his postgame callout versus Princeton was uncharacteristic.
“It was kind of just kind of a polite ‘F— you’ to everybody. ‘We’re back, and we made it to the Final Four,’” Joe said. “He earned the right to speak up for himself and his teammates. He keeps quiet, deflects a lot of stuff. So once in a while, you can back people off the plate.”
Spallina has his regrets. He explained his answer after beating Princeton “was more of just a cultivation of just what our team has gone through,” but he wished he said something different.
Joey Spallina celebrates with a teammate after a goal in Syracuse’s Final Four loss to Maryland on May 24, 2025. Spallina was held without a goal in SU’s defeat to the Terrapins. Jacob Halsema | Staff Photographer
The following week against Maryland was why. Spallina finished with just one assist — which came with three seconds left — and Syracuse’s season ended with a whimper. The doubters Spallina shut up seven days earlier crawled out of the woodwork. Now, he’s on a mission to silence them once again.
“That’s the first thought. I don’t think there’s much other thoughts going through there,” Spallina said of returning to championship weekend.
Spallina’s offseason lasted less than a week. He immediately started playing box lacrosse for the Snake Island Muskies in the Three Nations Senior Lacrosse League. Every weekend, Spallina traveled eight hours to the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation to test his skills against adults.
Even there, Spallina was the center of attention. He was nicknamed “Hollywood” by his teammates because of his 37,000 Instagram followers. There was a palpable buzz whenever Spallina played, and kids waited for autographs following games, Snake Island head coach Kariwate Mitchell said.
After recording 378 points for the Orangeville Northmen in the Ontario Junior Lacrosse league in the two previous summers, Spallina matched up against pro players with the Muskies. Like anywhere Spallina’s been, he put up numbers, notching 73 points in 17 games and leading Snake Island to a Presidents Cup Championship.
“There’s only a handful of guys that can do the things that he can do with a lacrosse stick in his hand,” Snake Island teammate Ryan Lynchbury said. “ There’s no real impossible for him. He can make things happen from nothing.”
During the week, he worked on his speed and agility training with Kull at Revolution Athletics. Spallina donned a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants with his hood up, imploring Kull to turn off the air conditioning.
Working to be the best is all Spallina knows. Since high school, he’s gotten up every day at 4:45 a.m. He goes from weight training to speed sessions before shooting at Stony Brook’s facilities.
It’s what sets Spallina apart.
Every training session, every weight lifted, every ball shot has led to this moment, where Spallina has one more opportunity at cementing his legacy at Syracuse.
It makes him think of his younger self. The little kid who fell in love with lacrosse in the backyard of his Rocky Point, New York, home. Spallina never imagined what would follow. The glory, the noise, all that came from being in the spotlight.
They’re all chapters of Spallina’s story. And he wants to write his own ending.
“When I first committed, that was my opening, ending line: I want to bring Syracuse back to the pedigree and the place that we should be. And that’s being at Final Fours.
“Nothing’s really changed.”
Photograph courtesy of SU Athletics
Published on January 29, 2026 at 12:00 am