Nicolas Mergins | Staff Writer
Season Outlook
The Eastern Connecticut State University Men’s Lacrosse team kicks off its 2025 season this Sunday, March 2nd when they visit Curry College. Head coach Craig Gibson enters his second season for the Warriors. With 15 freshmen, the most since 2022, the Warriors are the youngest team in the Little East Conference this season. Additionally, the Warriors return seven sophomores, including their top two goal scorers in Tanner Drobish (28) and Connor Chirico (27), and top turnover causer Erik Suzio, who was also second on the team in ground ball wins last season. St. Thomas Aquinas transfer Kyle Bross also joins the sophomore class this season.
As for upperclassmen, the Warriors return six Juniors, including their third leading goal scorer in Mike Stevenson (24), and second leading turnover causer Jacob Shook. Just as they were last year, the 2025 Warriors squad will again be led by a four-player senior class including third-leading points scorer Brycen Kennedy, as well as Sean Ventresca and Mike Glass, and ground ball wins leader and 2024 all-conference faceoff specialist Rick O’Neal.
Seniors on season goals and 2025 squad:
Sean Ventresca – “We have high expectations, everyone in the room is a talented guy, everyone is here for a reason, everybody deserves to be here, deserves to be on the team, deserves to be on the field, so our expectations are high, we’re looking for a good season this year. Coach Gibson’s philosophies and ways of getting us out at practice and mindsets going into games and everything is positive and I think it’s going to lead us in a positive direction.”
Rick O’Neal – “If we get a loss at any point this year, I want to make sure we don’t just take it on the chin and make sure we find things we can learn with losses. I feel like a lot of the time we’ll hit a wall, and it’s hard to get over that wall once we get there, so I feel like if we are to encounter that this year, we just try to break through it this time.”
Brycen Kennedy – This is the closest we’ve ever been in the locker room, it’s sometimes a thing in the past, you know, people aren’t always excited to go to practice days and stuff like that but you know you feel the excitement from everyone this year, like we’re all locked in, we’re all bought in, we all believe in coach, we all believe in each other.”
Mike Glass – The people that come in as first years, they’re finishing up high school lacrosse as some of the best players on not only their team but in their conference. They’re not just some random kids, they’re Lacrosse players and they’re ready to play, and they’re more youthful than a lot of these older guys, they have the energy, they’re ready to go, they’re ready to run, age is just a number, and you know, if you’ve got the skill and you can back it up, you can play here, it [age] doesn’t matter.”
Coach Craig Gibson on 2025 season and squad:
The advantage to this season is more about I think them understanding it’s a marathon, not a sprint for us. We have a lot of guys in our sophomore class who played every minute of their freshman year and gained valuable experience, so hopefully that, even though we’re youthful, we have game experience. For me personally, the difference between this year and last year is I see us getting better every day, that guys are watching hours worth of film after our games, that might not have been the culture of the years past, that steady build is there, whereas last year we were trying but didn’t feel like we were stacking each day on top of one another, that to me is the most exciting thing. We’re youthful, yes, but every single time we step out on the field, we bring that type of fire, and we’re seeing ourselves get better every single day.
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