Men's Lacrosse

National Champions! Cornell Wins NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship, 11th Ivy League Title All-Time

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – The No. 1 Cornell men’s lacrosse team won the Ivy League’s 11th NCAA men’s lacrosse national championship on Monday afternoon after defeating No. 2 Maryland, 13-10, in the title game at Gilette Stadium in front of 32,512 fans.
 
Cornell, top seed in the tournament, earned a spot in the title game after defeating No. 5 Penn State on Saturday, 11-9. The Big Red earned its first NCAA championship since 1977.
 

CJ Kirst was named the tournament’s most outstanding player, and Michael Long, Wyatt Knust, Hugh Kelleher, and Ryan Goldstein were also named to the All-Tournament team.
 
At halftime, Cornell held a 6-5 advantage over Maryland, and the Big Red extended that lead to 8-5 with two Kirst goals in the third quarter. Maryland brought things within one, 10-9, with back-to-back goals early in the fourth quarter, however Cornell scored three of the game’s final four goals, including two by Kirst, in the final 6:42. Kirst’s final goal, the dagger with 50 seconds remaining, tied the NCAA single-season goals record (82), after the senior also set a new NCAA career goals record earlier this season.
 
Kirst finished his day with seven points on six goals and an assist, followed by Goldstein who tallied four goals for the Big Red. Knust made 12 saves in goal.
 
Cornell now has four NCAA championships, and joins Princeton (6) and Yale (1) as Ivy League programs to own NCAA titles.


Cornell’s title wraps up an incredibly successful 2025 Ivy League men’s lacrosse season. The league earned three NCAA Tournament berths – No. 1 Cornell, No. 3 Princeton, and Harvard. Princeton also reached the NCAA Quarterfinals and fell to Syracuse in a classic quarterfinal, 19-18. In all, six Ivies were nationally ranked during the regular season – Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Penn and Yale.
 
Individually, three of the five Tewaaraton Award finalists are Ivies, including Cornell’s Kirst, along with Princeton’s Coulter Mackesy and Harvard’s Sam King. The Tewaaraton Award ceremony is slated for Thursday, May 29 and will crown the top NCAA men’s lacrosse player in 2025.