Bumpy Few Years Leaves Marist Savoring Every Moment

Jojo Pirreca earned his way onto Marist’s starting attack unit in his first game as a freshman in 2019. Classmate Jamison Embury followed him soon after.

By season’s end, both had scored in a MAAC championship game, helping the Red Foxes earn an NCAA tournament berth and a chance to play host to an opening round game.

Even better times were ahead, they figured. It just took a little while for them to arrive.

Both Pirreca and Embury are graduate students this year and a major part of Marist’s in-season turnaround. The Red Foxes (10-7) ripped off six consecutive victories, including Saturday’s 12-7 defeat of Siena, to bookend their careers with another NCAA trip.

“When we came in as freshmen and we won that first MAAC championship, we thought we were going to walk out of here with four,” Pirreca said. “With those two years of COVID that put us on pause, to be able come back here and win another one and leave our legacy, not many guys have left here with two. It feels great to get out of here with two rings.”

Marist wants more, of course, entering Wednesday’s visit to Delaware (12-4). It wants to win a postseason game for the second time, like it did in 2015 when it beat Bryant in a play-in game. It wants a shot at top-seeded Duke on Sunday. It wants the ride to go on as long as possible.

Because, put simply, the last few years were awfully bumpy.

Marist was off to a 3-3 start in 2020 coming off its last NCAA appearance, beating Army, then losing to Delaware and Richmond by a combined three goals. Then the pandemic shut down the world.

When the Red Foxes got back the next year, they opened their season March 6 — then didn’t play again until April 20 because of a pause due to health and safety protocols. It was arguably the most frustrating season of any Division I team that attempted anything close to a full season. Marist managed to play only four games.

Last year brought a full season — a 1-6 start, a 6-1 surge and then a MAAC semifinal loss at home to eventual league champion Manhattan. With another opportunity gone, the Red Foxes’ seven graduate students who were members of the 2019 team had one last chance to get another title.

“I think when we were freshmen, we were just so new and kind of naive to it that we weren’t able to be aware of how grateful we are to have the opportunity,” Embury said. “It was a long couple years between this one and our freshman year. We had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of tough times that we had to get through. That’s why the message this year was to really embrace everything — embrace all the obstacles, embrace all the ups and downs.”

And there would be obstacles.

Marist has thrived in its 12 seasons under coach Keegan Wilkinson, delivering five 10-win seasons and now three NCAA tournament appearances. As the effects of the pandemic shredded a pair of seasons, he had a good idea much of that strong freshman class from 2019 would stick around for a fifth year if the opportunity presented itself.

“It was a no-brainer for me to come back,” Pirreca said. “I just love lacrosse too much to sit out two years and move on, and this program just meant too much to me. All my best friends in the world were coming back, too, and my best friends in the world are still on the team. I couldn’t not come back and leave those guys out to dry. I just love this program too much.”

Yet as unsatisfying as the end of last season was, the start of this year was every bit as jarring. Marist came out of February at 0-4, averaging just 8.5 goals. There were hard, emotionally powerful conversations between the Red Foxes’ staff and veteran players, and it was clear changes needed to be made.

Wilkinson settled on an unorthodox solution: He and assistant Dave Scarcello would switch duties; Scarcello took over the offense, while Wilkinson coordinated the defense.

“I felt it was really important that guys like Jamison and Jojo and James Lyons could hear from Dave’s perspective about things he was seeing that would help us achieve success,” Wilkinson said. “It obviously worked out, and I couldn’t have had more confidence in making that decision, which was very difficult but one I knew that would help pay dividends for us moving forward.”

For the staff, it meant the opportunity to learn more about players they might not have worked with as closely in previous seasons. For the players, it was a fresh voice that provided a jolt to the offense.

Marist won its next two, then averaged 14 goals in losses at Canisius and Quinnipiac. By early April, the Red Foxes were 3-3 in the conference, and in Pirreca’s telling, on the bubble just to make the MAAC tournament.

They haven’t lost since, effectively adopting a playoff mentality for the last half-dozen games.

“We didn’t have an identity early in the season,” Embury said. “I think the beautiful thing about this team and the amount of grad students that we have is there was no other way for us through besides winning. When it came down to it, we had to win. It was either you drop a game and lose and you’re out, or we win and we can keep winning and we can keep doing this.”

The offensive difference is obvious. Marist is averaging 18 goals during its winning streak, and was especially ruthless in the MAAC tournament. The Red Foxes overwhelmed Quinnipiac 29-19 in the quarterfinals, scoring the most goals of any Division I team since Johns Hopkins had 31 against Saint Joseph’s in 1999. A 19-7 rout of Mount St. Mary’s followed in the semifinals.

Wilkinson credited the fusion of more effective dodging and splendid ball movement, a combination the Red Foxes didn’t enjoy early in the season.

“It changed everything for us,” Pirreca said. “Wilks is doing a phenomenal job at the defensive end as well, and that coaching switch was honestly the turning point in our season because Coach Scarcello came in and did an awesome job.”

The second-half burst vaulted Pirreca to offensive player of the year honors in the MAAC for the second year in a row, and he heads into the NCAA tournament with 45 goals and 20 assists.

Embury had only played in 12 games over the previous three seasons, losing much of last year to a torn ACL. He enters the postseason with 39 goals and 24 assists.

Combined, they’re only the second set of teammates in Marist history to both hit the 60-point plateau, joining Joseph Radin and J.D. Recor in 2015.

“They’re like yin and yang,” Wilkinson said. “Jamison is a very outgoing, very dynamic personality that you see all the time floating around the McCann Center, and Jojo is very quiet and stoic and serious. It’s just so funny to us that they’ve been able to do that on such a consistent basis over the course of their career, just being such different personalities.”

But the thing they’ve had in common since they arrived on the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., campus nearly five years ago is an approach of taking winning very seriously. That’s part of the reason they savored Saturday’s victory. But it also informs their view of what Wednesday represents.

“I’m really proud of the leadership of the guys I came in here with and the guys who are seniors and grad students,” Embury said. “Now, we get to kind of live out that dream in real time. It’s tough to get here to this point, and just to make the most of that opportunity, I’m very excited.”

When Embury, Pirreca and the Red Foxes last appeared in the postseason, they dropped a 14-8 decision at home to UMBC. But they remember playing the only Division I game that night in 2019 and drawing a crowd of more than 2,100.

Now, the Red Foxes find themselves back in the spotlight after the kind of absence they couldn’t have imagined four years ago.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to put Marist on the map and let everyone know MAAC schools are no joke,” Pirreca said. “We’ve had a tough time with COVID the past two years. We took two years off. It’s been a long road getting back here. We dropped the ball last year against Manhattan. We’re just grateful to be back here and we want to show everyone what we’re about.”