“Honestly, I’m proud of what we have accomplished; making it to the national semi-finals is no small feat,” senior captain Branden Van Loon said. “Do I wish that we had made it further? Of course, but that may not have been in the cards for us this year.”

This year’s NCAA tournament was one full of surprises, as it is almost every year (with the exception being 2008, in which all the #1 seeds made the Final Four, which no one predicted anyway because it never happens).

With just 22 seconds remaining in a game that had gone back and forth for nearly 60 minutes, Cornell senior midfielder Connor English beat his defender, drew back his stick and fired the ball at the Syracuse goal — only to have the shot deflect off the cross-bar, preventing the Red from tying up the match and ending Wednesday’s game in a 13-12 loss to the Orange.