SU women’s lacrosse commit Ava Ryan set new highs after playing for Ireland
Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox. Subscribe to our sports newsletter here.
Yorktown girls’ lacrosse coach Heather Raniolo wishes she had 100 Ava Ryans.
“Kids like that, it’s like picking (a needle) in a haystack,” Raniolo said. “Selflessness. Team play. Fierce player. How she is able to always step up, never back down and always ask for more.”
Whenever Ryan finds downtime at home in Yorktown Heights, New York, she doesn’t turn to a screen. She picks up a lacrosse stick. Before long, she reaches out to longtime friend and teammate Sydney Sateriale to see if she wants to go shoot. When Sateriale is free, the two go to the closest field, finding local goalies to shoot at or firing at an empty cage. If she’s not around, Ryan goes alone.
While balancing honors classes and competing across three varsity sports at Yorktown High School — field hockey, basketball and lacrosse — she still spends her spare hours getting extra work in silence.
“I love the sport so much,” Ryan said. “I’d rather be doing it than anything else. Being able to play silences everything else.”
That internal engine transformed Ryan from an eighth-grade varsity call-up into a premier Division I recruit. On Sept. 4, 2026, the lefty attack became the second commit in Syracuse’s 2028 class, and its first four-star. Yet, until recently, Ryan didn’t believe she belonged at a program anywhere near SU’s level.
“Syracuse wasn’t always on my radar, because it’s such a high level. I was setting my bar a little low when I started,” Ryan said. “Holy Cross was my dream school. That was what I was reaching for.”
Thousands of miles away in Tokyo, she shattered that self-imposed ceiling.
Eligible through her family heritage, Ryan represented Ireland at the 2026 World Lacrosse Women’s Championship in late July. At 16, she stepped onto the field alongside collegiate talent and international veterans. She was supposed to be learning from the sideline. She instead took over the attack, finishing second on Team Ireland across five matches with 10 goals and first with 17 shots on target.
Syracuse head coach Regy Thorpe was impressed. His assessment quickly reached Ryan’s family.
“There was a girl playing against women out there,” Ryan’s father, Marcus Ryan, recalled Thorpe saying. “And the girl won.”
“Tokyo was the best experience of my life so far,” Ryan said. “It was great to connect with those girls and represent my family.”
Former Syracuse All-American Nicole Levy, an assistant coach for Team Ireland, showed Ryan that high-level college lacrosse matched the fluid, creative style she already loved.
“Coach Nicole’s tips were so creative,” Ryan said. “It wasn’t stressful talking to Nicole, she was like a friend. She introduced me to everything I loved about Syracuse. I hope I can become the player she was. It’s exactly where I want to see myself and exactly where I want to be.”
Emulating a legend like Levy requires a relentless standard. But for Ryan, that work ethic was rooted at home, long before lacrosse entered the picture.
Ava Ryan pushes forward with the ball for Yorktown High School lacrosse. With Yorktown, Ryan established herself as a premier Division I recruit. Courtesy of Sarah Quarto
In 1996, her parents, Marcus and Angela Ryan, emigrated from Ireland with everything they owned packed into two suitcases. Ryan’s family brought a deep athletic background from across the Atlantic. Her uncles played League of Ireland soccer and competed professionally in England, while Angela’s family featured Gaelic football players across County Monaghan. They were immersed in an Irish sports culture where nobody boasts and hard work is non-negotiable. Lacrosse was foreign.
Ryan played soccer first, but living in a lacrosse-crazed town like Yorktown, she decided to try out third-grade youth clinics alongside her classmates. She immediately fell in love with the game’s speed and creativity, picking up a stick and never putting it down. Marcus never had to push her to practice; she absorbed that standard from Day 1.
“She’s her own self-driver,” Marcus said. “When she scores, she passes the ball. Team over selfish. She speaks with her actions more than anything else.”
Those actions found an ideal partner in Sateriale.
The two met in preschool, grew apart during elementary school and reconnected in middle school when Sateriale quit gymnastics and started playing lacrosse. By seventh grade, Ryan joined Compass Lacrosse, and Sateriale followed shortly after. In spring 2024, Raniolo called both up to varsity as eighth-graders — with Ryan starting in the Section 1 championship.
“It’s not an easy thing to make our Yorktown lacrosse program as an eighth-grader,” Raniolo said. “Every single final she appeared in, she’s been a huge piece of our win. There is physical play out there, and she’s doing it.”
Opposing defenses scout Ryan as a natural lefty, but Raniolo pushed her early on to eliminate relying on just one side.
“Ava is hard to scout because she is ahead of everyone else. Not many defenders are expecting that,” Sateriale added.
Navigating varsity as middle schoolers cemented an unspoken chemistry on the attack.
“She was my partner, we were always looking for each other,” said Sateriale, now a James Madison commit. “There was never a time where we weren’t together staying after practice to do more wall ball, or shoot more. It was always just the two of us sticking together to get better.”
“I can look at her, and she knows exactly what I’ll do,” Ryan added. “Half of my goals were assists from her, and vice versa. You can watch our play, it’s the same every time. It’s a pick-and-roll.”
Their bond extends off the turf. Sitting on the beach one afternoon with Sateriale and teammate Zoe Ellison, the conversation turned to the local impact of the “15 for Life” foundation, honoring the late Yorktown and Syracuse lacrosse alum Rob Kavovit.
Wanting to bring that mental health initiative directly into their halls, the trio decided to act. With guidance and backing from Zoe’s father, Eric Ellison — a local supporter of the foundation — Ryan, Sateriale and Ellison co-founded the 15 for Life Club at Yorktown High School to normalize mental health check-ins across the student body.
“It’s not just the sport; it’s the connections you build from it,” Ryan said. “I thought we could figure something out in the school. Everyone has good days and bad days. Having someone by your side and being a good teammate 24/7, that’s what it’s about.”
“Her leadership doesn’t stop when she gets off the field,” Raniolo added. “She cares about this community, she cares about this town. She sparks it in the program.”
Ryan still has two years left at Yorktown. After three consecutive section finals and a championship ring, her sights are set on an outright New York state title alongside 23 returning varsity teammates.
“I know how it feels to win, and I know how it feels to lose,” Ryan said. “It’s the best feeling and the worst feeling in the world. If we put in the work, it’s totally achievable to make it to states.”
When she finally heads to Syracuse, she’ll arrive with a standard forged on quiet Yorktown fields and tested against the world’s best.
She once wondered if Division I was too high of a reach. Now, after five matches in Tokyo and three years of turning Yorktown turf into a personal workshop, that doubt is gone.
Ryan set her bar low once. She’ll never make that mistake again.
