Go Big Red: Fall 2024

Boys’ lacrosse captured its second consecutive title.

In spring 2023, Lawrenceville’s boys’ lacrosse team won its first national championship under head coach Jon Posner in a nail-biter, scoring in the second overtime to edge Brunswick School, 14-13.

This past May, Big Red left nothing to chance, racing out to a huge advantage against Brunswick in the season’s final game and cruising to a 14-5 win to end its season at No. 1 in the Q-Collar Inside Lacrosse National High School Power Rankings and the USA Lacrosse Magazine Top 25 for the second straight year, trading spots with Brunswick in both polls. Only a 13-12 overtime loss to Brunswick in early April kept Lawrenceville from an unblemished 20-0 season. Big Red also became the first team in the history of the Inside Lacrosse rankings to finish back-to-back seasons at No. 1.

“It means everything. It’s an incredible feeling. It’s an incredible accomplishment. Our kids really believed in themselves from day one. They set out when we started the season that they were going to repeat as national champions,” Posner told Inside Lacrosse’s Matt Kinnear. “They put the work in, and they believed that they could do it. The talk to start the season was that 2023 is over, that’s in the past. Our legacy is going to be the first-ever back-to-back national champions. And they did it.”

Attack Connor Gately ’24 scored the first three goals of the game, followed by one each from Mikey Rooney ’24 and Sawyer English ’25, while goalie Timmy Piacentini ’24 and the Big Red defense stubbornly refused Brunswick any chance of closing the growing gap. Gately and Piacentini, who were selected to play in the Corrigan Sports All-America Game in July, will compete as rivals next when Gately attends Yale and Piacentini suits up for Cornell. Rooney is off to Boston University.

Growing up on Lawrenceville’s golf course helped Adrian Jordan ’24 conquer the competition.

When Lawrenceville boys’ golf won its first six matches this past spring, co-captain Adrian Jordan ’24 was integral to that hot start. And when the team captured the Mercer County Tournament at Mercer Oaks, Jordan was atop the leaderboard, carding a 72 to finish first overall. He followed that with a 71 to claim the N.J.I.S.A.A. Prep A title, as well.

Although the team no longer competes on the School’s campus course, Jordan honed his craft on the venerable old track, introduced to the game at the age of 8 by his father, Phil Jordan ’85 P’24, chair of the Religion and Philosophy Department.

“My dad would take me out here on the golf course,” the younger Jordan recalls, “and I was pretty good, so I just kept on going.”

Now, ten years later, Jordan played this spring as the team’s No. 1 seed and ranked fifth in New Jersey in his age group, the latest laurels he’s earned over a consistently successful four years playing for Big Red. Last summer, Jordan finished in the top 10 in the New Jersey Amateur Championships. He’s also had a huge impact on his team, helping swing Lawrenceville to the Mid-Atlantic Prep League championship in 2023. As a Second Former, Jordan won the individual state championship while Big Red earned the team title.

Jordan’s next stop will be Kenyon College, where he will play golf beginning next year. If he seems to be a familiar figure at the Gambier, Ohio, campus, perhaps it will be because he reminds someone of his grandfather, former Lawrenceville Head Master Philip H. Jordan Jr. ’50 H’61 ’96 P’85 ’90 GP’24, who was president of the college from 1974-95.

Golf is largely an individual sport, but Jordan emphasized that this year’s golf team “really closely bonded” and had a great team dynamic. He embraced his role as co-captain, explaining that he liked “to give some of the other guys some advice on their swings or short game” and enjoyed the “aspect of leadership” that being a captain offers. One of his first tasks this past season was to help plan the team’s spring break trip to Arizona, where they strengthened both their games and their bonds as teammates. He was proud of the team’s depth of talent, too.

“I [didn’t] have to be at my best for the team to win,” he explained.

Throughout the construction of Tsai Field House, the golf team has practiced at the nearby Mountain View Golf Course. If the weather turns bad, the team heads to the basement of the F.M. Kirby Math and Science Center, where a golf simulator was installed – an amenity that helped determine which players qualified for the varsity team based on its realistic simulation.

“It gives feedback on what your swing looks like,” Jordan explained, “and where the ball would have gone if it was a real
course.”

Still, being on an actual course in the thick of a competitive match is part of the challenge that makes golf so difficult. Although Jordan believes the physical aspect of golf is complicated, “the mental aspect is more prevalent than in other sports,” he says, adding that even in the middle of a tough day, it’s vital to “maintain a stable and healthy mental attitude, not let that get into your head, and just play with what you have.”

In Jordan’s case, his bag is full.

– Alexander Donne ’26

As she prepares to row at Duke, Vivian Teeley ’24 leans on the example of her mother and former coach, Bernadette Teeley, who just happens to be a world champion.

After enrolling at the University of Dayton in the late 1990s, Bernadette Teeley P’24 quickly became a vital cog in a nascent crew program, establishing herself as an elite collegiate rower. “Her success put women’s rowing on the map for Dayton,” her cousin, Jim Marten, told University of Dayton Magazine. After earning individual All-America honors at UD and as a graduate student at the University of Michigan, Teeley and her U.S. Women’s eight-oared boat earned the gold at the 2002 FISA World Championships in Spain.

Winning on the world stage “was really exciting because [it] was a watershed moment in women’s sports,” Teeley said of her boat becoming the first from the United States to win gold at that level in over two decades.

Rowing remains a significant part of life for Teeley, Lawrenceville’s dean of academics, who has coached girls’ varsity rowing since arriving at the School in 2012. That team’s co-captains this past spring were Natalie Moore ’24 and Teeley’s daughter, Vivian Teeley ’24, who will row this year for Duke University.

Vivian says her familiarly with the “crewmunity” attracted her.

Because “I grew up around crew, I saw that a lot of my mother’s friends were rowers, and it seemed like something I wanted to be a part of,” she says. “Although it’s a lot of work, it’s definitely something that I want to work at.”

The girls’ crew team has long been shaped by Bernadette’s leadership, and it was by her daughter’s, as well. Reflecting on her mother’s coaching style, Vivian feels that she “knows when to fire people up and when to settle them down” – something Vivian worked to achieve as captain, though in her own way.

Bernadette emphasizes the “difficulties” and nuances of coaching one’s own daughter, as well as those of being coached by a parent.

“I give all faculty children a lot of credit. To perform for [one’s] parents, there’s a personal read on everything said,” she explains, adding that from a daughter’s standpoint, “criticism can land a bit more sharply, and praise can be doubted.”

This feedback sparks motivation to “come every day and give your best,” an attribute of any great rower, she says.

What makes for a model rower? To the coach, it’s driven by showing up every day and being willing to be coached. In a sport as grueling as crew, Bernadette says the ability to “apply feedback or criticism for the good of the boat” and the capacity to “master your own mental space when the little voice is telling you to stop” are crucial to the overall success of a rower and the team.

For her part, Vivian echoes her mother’s motto to explain how the seeds of success grow: “It’s not the work you want to do that makes you better.”

— Celestine Sutter ’27/The Lawrence

Girls’ golf took home the N.J.I.S.A.A. Prep A championship in May, a week after claiming the Mid-Atlantic Prep League title. Isabella Wang ’26 shot a 75, good for tops in the M.A.P.L.

Girls’ outdoor track & field won the N.J.I.S.A.A. Prep A, Mercer County, and Mid-Atlantic Prep League championships in May. Jess Bentum ’25 set a personal best of 102 feet in the discus to win the event, and Blair Bartlett ’27 took top honors in the 1600m and 3200m.

Boys’ golf won the Mercer County Tournament and the N.J.I.S.A.A. Prep A championships, with Adrian Jordan ’24 winning individual titles in both events. The Crooked Stick also remains in Lawrenceville’s possession after a 198-206 win over Hill.

Girls’ lacrosse claimed the Mid-Atlantic Prep League and Mercer County Tournament Association championships this spring and were also the Wooden Stick champs.

In addition to their national championship repeat, boys’ lacrosse also downed Hill on May 11 to claim another Mid-Atlantic Prep League title.

Girls’ and boys’ crew both captured the Brown Cup this spring, with the boys adding the Mid-Atlantic Prep League title, as well.