On Thursday, CJ Kirst ’25 received the highest accolade available to a collegiate lacrosse athlete: the Tewaaraton Award. With the distinction, he rounds out one of the most impressive men’s lacrosse careers of all time.
The Tewaaraton Award is granted by a panel of college coaches appointed by the Tewaaraton Foundation, an organization which honors lacrosse’s roots in Native American culture. The award is named “Tewaaraton” after the Mohawk word for the sport.
Kirst’s final year with the Red included winning the program’s first national title since 1977, setting the NCAA record for most career goals (247) and tying the NCAA record for single-season goals (82). This was far from Kirst’s first recognition from the Tewaaraton Foundation; he was a finalist for the award in 2023 and a semifinalist in 2024.
The Tewaaraton Ceremony took place at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Honored alongside Kirst was UNC’s Chloe Humphrey.
Along with Kirst, Michael Long ’25 and sophomore attackman Ryan Goldstein were named Tewaaraton Award Nominees in a short list of 25 released before the group was narrowed down to five finalists on May 8. The recognition of the Red’s entire attack squad made Cornell the team with the second-most nominees, after Army, who had four.
The most recent Cornellian to earn the Tewaaraton Award was attackman Rob Panell ’13, and Kirst is the third Cornell athlete to win the Award since its inception in 2001.
The Tewaaraton Foundation also offers the Tewaaraton Native American Scholarship annually to two matriculating high school students from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which is comprised of six indigenous nations in the upstate New York region. The Cayuga, whose traditional homeland includes Ithaca, is a part of the Confederacy.
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.
