Cornell leaped ahead, scoring the first three goals of the game and holding Yale off, setting the pace for a high-scoring defeat of its New Haven rival. Senior attackman CJ Kirst and sophomore attackman Ryan Goldstein racked up the points, and it seemed like there was nothing the Bulldogs could have done to stop it.
It could be a description of the March 22 meeting of the two teams, in which Cornell’s 19-14 victory over Yale catapulted the Red to first place in the national media polls, where it would stay for the remainder of the regular season.
Or it could be a description of the second, and final, game between the Red and the Bulldogs in 2025. On Friday, history repeated itself. Only this time, No.1 Cornell (13-1, 7-0 Ivy) sent Yale (5-8, 3-4 Ivy) home in an Ivy League Tournament semifinal that lasted four and a half hours.
“This group is mature beyond words,” said head coach Connor Buczek ’15 MBA ’17. “I’ve been really proud of the leadership. Now that this one’s behind us, there’s not much time to enjoy it. It’s onto the next.”
The Red jumped out to an early lead, pushing through two separate hour-long lightning delays to secure a 21-14 victory in the opening game of the tournament and send Cornell directly to Sunday’s championship final.
Cornell struck first, rattling off three straight goals from sophomore midfielder Willem Firth, junior midfielder Brian Luzzi, and senior attackman CJ Kirst. Yale was able to find its first goal of the game, taking six shots in a single possession before one made its way past senior goalkeeper Wyatt Knust.
Junior defenseman Matt Dooley was next to score, stepping down and ripping a laser of a shot with his long pole. Yale’s starting faceoff, Machado Rodriguez, having won just one of his first four, was replaced by freshman Nick Wehmeyer. Wehmeyer gave the Bulldogs the energy they needed, winning his first seven draws.
Yale answered to bring the score to 4-2. A turnover caused by Kirst left sophomore attackman Goldstein with an open net that he easily scored on.
“We’ve got a great attack unit,” Goldstein said. “We’ve got a lot of different guys that can do a lot of different things. We don’t really care who gets the ball, who gets the glory, but we’re just trying to work towards the best possible shot.”
Sophomore midfielder Walker Schwartz followed by scoring the second pole goal of the game for Cornell, Kirst’s third assist of the first quarter. Yale pulled one back before a nearby lightning strike halted the game with less than two minutes left in the first quarter.
“[During weather delay] you kind of let guys have the maturity to work through that moment,” said senior attackman Michael Long. “When it gets close to game time, that’s where we [the seniors] come in and make sure we’re all on the same page.”
Just over an hour after the initial call for storm delay, play resumed while rain began to pour. The break had dealt a blow to the Red’s momentum; the Bulldogs started with possession near the net, and Yale’s Brad Sharp took advantage of the position to score within seconds.
After the following faceoff, Yale returned to sneak another past Knust, cutting the Bulldogs’ deficit to 6-5 before the end of the high-scoring first quarter. Though Cornell had one up on Yale, the Bulldogs had doubled the Red’s shots, with 20 in the first 15 minutes.
Long opened the second quarter scoring, but Yale answered quickly. Kirst then notched his second goal of the game, 228th of his career.
After going down with what looked like a non-contact injury, Goldstein returned to the field, scored twice and put up an alley-oop that Firth buried. Senior midfielder Hugh Kelleher added with a heavy step-down shot to bring the Cornell lead to 12-6.
“We had to keep playing our game,” Kirst said. “We were going in there with the mentality that it was all about us. I’m really proud of how everyone stayed dialed in and had that mentality throughout the entire 60 minutes.”
Yale rattled off three straight and held the ball after a Cornell penalty to start the second half with possession. This brought the high-scoring first half to a close with the score at 12-9, Cornell in the lead.
Yale scored twice to start the third quarter, cutting the Cornell lead to one. Long broke the five goal run with his second of the game, his first multi-goal game since March. Sophomore midfielder Ryan Waldman added on the delayed penalty.
Yale and Goldstein traded blows, with Long and Kirst following shortly after. The game was then halted by a second hour-long lightning delay. The third quarter finally came to a close with the Red in a 17-12 lead, four hours after the first faceoff of the game.
This time, the weather delay failed to suppress the Red’s energy. On a man-up opportunity, Goldstein notched his fifth goal of the game. He was followed by senior midfielder Andrew Dalton and Long.
“Credit to the senior class for bringing the juice, bringing the energy, when we got the heads up that we were going out,” Goldstein said. “That was a big part of the success that we had in the first minutes coming out of the rain delay.”
Yale got one back before Kelleher crossed up his defender and scored on the delayed penalty. With this, Cornell pulled its starting attackmen at a score of 21-13. The game ended 21-14.
Kirst led the pack, securing nine points on three goals and six assists, with Goldstein and Long logging eight apiece. Ten players found the net for the Red in another display of offensive depth.
Knust held it down in net-saving 15 of 29 shots on goal, a 52 percent save percentage.
Junior faceoff Jack Cascadden won 18 of 30 draws, good for a 60 percent faceoff win percentage.
“It was great to have multiple extended periods of time to reassess, as we don’t normally have that opportunity in game,” Buczek said. “Having the ability to talk through it and correct things in real time was really helpful. We’ll go through that tape and figure out where we’ve got to get better to take care of business on Sunday.”
The action continues with the tournament final at 1 p.m. on Sunday. Cornell will face the victor of the second semifinal between No. 2 Princeton and No. 3 Harvard for the championship title. The Tigers and the Crimson, who were scheduled to begin their match at 6:30 p.m., saw the game pushed to 9 p.m. Friday night.
Coverage of the Ivy League Tournament Championship will be provided on ESPN+.
Alexis Rogers is the sports editor on the 143rd editorial board. She is in the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts & Sciences, and she can be reached at arogers@cornellsun.com.
