Sewickley Academy lacrosse defender delivers important message about mental health
By: Ray Fisher
Saturday, July 15, 2023 | 11:01 AM
Submitted | Todd Eannarino
Sewickley Academy’s Lauren Retzlaff competes during the 2023 season.
Lauren Retzlaff, a sophomore defender on the 2023 Sewickley Academy girls lacrosse team, will be campaigning for a serious cause during the upcoming school year.
The 17-year-old Retzlaff will serve as an ambassador for Morgan’s Message and plans to start a chapter at Sewickley in the fall.
Morgan’s Message is a nonprofit organization that supports motivated students to become active leaders and advocates of student-athlete mental health on their campus and in their communities.
Ali Grenert, Sewickley’s first-year girls lacrosse coach in 2022-23, will serve as the faculty supervisor of the Sewickley Academy chapter starting this fall.
“We are at the very beginning stages of bringing Morgan’s Message to Sewickley Academy,” Grenert said.
“At this point, Lauren is the best person to ask about the club.”
Sounds like a plan. Retzlaff recently took a few moments to answer questions about the club.
How did you get involved with Morgan’s Message?
I initially stumbled upon the Morgan’s Message organization on Instagram and was super interested. I did some research and when I read more about Morgan, who the organization is dedicated to, I knew I wanted to be involved. I love how inclusive it is and how it involves high school, college, professional and former athletes.
What is Morgan’s Message and what role will you play for it this school year?
Morgan’s Message is an organization dedicated to Morgan Rodgers. Morgan was a lacrosse player at Duke. She suffered a season-ending knee injury during her sophomore season requiring her to need surgery and countless hours of rehabilitation. During this, she struggled with her mental health and self-worth. She suffered in silence until she ended her life by suicide.
This sparked the idea for Morgans’s Message.
Morgans’s Message is an organization that strives to break the stigma around athlete mental health. It encourages athletes to speak up about struggles and get help. Overall, it is a support platform that normalizes talking about mental health in the athletic world.
Are any other Sewickley Academy students involved in the local program at this time? And if students are interested in becoming involved, how do they do that?
Currently, I am bringing this club to Sewickley Academy. There will be a club fair in the fall when school starts for anyone — athlete or not — to join Morgans’s Message. From there, we will have meetings and plan events often.
Are you involved in any other extracurricular activities or clubs at your school?
I am involved in the yearbook club, and I am the co-vice president of the service club. Outside of school, I’m a part of the Sewickley Valley Sitters babysitting organization.
When did you start playing lacrosse and have you always been a defensive specialist?
I started playing lacrosse when I was in third grade. My mom was a lacrosse player in college and coached my team. She has moved with me and has been my coach since then. She also was a defender, so I’m following in her footsteps.
(Lauren’s mother, Kim Retzlaff, competed in lacrosse at Middlesex High School followed by a career at Colgate.)
I have not always been a defender. I played midfield when I was younger. However, when I started playing travel lacrosse, my team needed defenders. I decided to step up and take one for the team. That is when I knew I loved defense. I have played defense since then which was fifth grade.
What drew you to the sport of lacrosse?
I play lacrosse because it has always brought me a lot of joy. It has always been an outlet for me, and I’ve met such amazing people through it. I have made great friends and had amazing coaches and mentors.
Overall, it’s a fun sport with a great social aspect as well.
What are your early expectations for next year’s girls lacrosse team at Sewickley?
We will be very small (numbers-wise) and also young. We’ve lost seven seniors, which was around half our team. We hope to do some recruiting in the offseason. Although we’ll be young, we do have some very talented players who have a lot of experience inside school lacrosse and outside school lacrosse. Our returning players all have very good chemistry and friendship on and off the field, which will be the key to having a good (2024) season. We are all determined to have an even better season next year and are really looking forward to it.”
Retzlaff’s sophomore season unfortunately was wrecked by injuries.
She missed the first part of the season due to two concussions she received in April and October of 2021.
“The moment she was cleared to play — a very exciting moment for our team — she started and played the entire game,” Grenert said.
“She is the last person I would want to defend me if I were on the field.”
The Panthers traveled to Canon-McMillan on May 1 to play a section game with the Big Macs. The 5-foot-8 Retzlaff suffered an injury that forced her to the bench for the rest of the season.
“I suffered a season-ending Achilles injury,” she said. “Unfortunately, I had been dealing with this injury the whole season.
“I previously had a severe 18-month-long concussion, and when I was cleared from that, I jumped very fast into lacrosse. I was so excited to be playing with and contributing to the team again. I played in a few games and pushed through the pain until that game when I realized I was truly injured.”
Grenert described Retzlaff as a team player who, along with seniors Claudia Kronk and Gwen Belt, will lead the Sewickley defense next season.
“Lauren is resilient,” Grenert said. “She is one of our strongest defenders and earned the nickname ‘The Wall,’ as she has an uncanny ability to stop her opponents from entering the critical scoring area.
There is no point trying to roll the crease when Lauren is defending you. You will be shut out, completely.
“Lauren is a team player. And she is crucial on transitions. The moment Kaitlyn Hayden, our goalie, makes a save and looks up the field to clear, Lauren is wide open in the midfield asking for the ball. Lauren has excellent stick skills, and her teammates trust her.”
Grenert said Retzlaff’s dedication to the sport sets her apart from other players.
“Lauren is very committed to lacrosse,” Grenert said. “You can usually find her practicing at the wall, fine tuning her passing, catching, throwing and overall reaction time.”
Prior to the start of the 2024 lacrosse season, Retzlaff hopes to continue an injury-riddled basketball career with the Panthers.
“I have been out the past two seasons due to concussions,” she said.
And prior to basketball season, Retzlaff will start her reign as a Morgan’s Message ambassador.
Morgan’s Message is structured around an ambassador system.
The organization was started via the establishment of chapters with volunteer student-athlete ambassadors on high school and collegiate campuses.
Tags: Sewickley Academy
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Incredible Year – Duke University
A generational talent. The Zion Williamson of college lacrosse. Incomparable. These are just a few of the ways people described Brennan O’Neill before he even donned a Blue Devils jersey for the Duke men’s lacrosse team.
A household name for lacrosse fans since he was 14 years old in eighth grade, O’Neill showed the casual sports fan why that was the case with one of the most memorable 12 months a college athlete can have.
After helping lead the U.S. to the 2022 World Lacrosse Men’s U21 Championship last summer, O’Neill entered his junior season at Duke as a preseason All-America first-team choice by the USILA — the nation’s coaches — and a preseason All-America third-team pick by Inside Lacrosse.
With virtually unattainable expectations placed upon him since he was tabbed as the next big thing in the sport and a wunderkind, there were always cynics trying to knock O’Neill off his pedestal. However, the introverted “wunderkind” was quietly determined not to let them. And that he did.
He finished the 2023 lacrosse season as a consensus first-team All-American, won the Tewaaraton Award as the nation’s best player and was named the USILA’s Lt. Raymond J. Enners Most Outstanding Division I Player and the ACC Offensive Player of the Year.
Those awards came among his peers. So, when he stepped onto the international stage this summer with seasoned professionals, some of whom have been playing lacrosse longer than he’s been alive, and scored five goals to lead the United States to the gold medal at the World Men’s Lacrosse Championship, no words were left to describe the legend that is Brennan O’Neill.
His performance — 14 goals and five assists in seven games — earned him the tournament’s Most Outstanding Midfielder and Most Valuable Player awards.
“He leaves me speechless,” said Duke and U.S. head coach John Danowski of O’Neill’s performance in the gold medal game. “I didn’t see that coming. When we needed someone, he put his foot in the ground. It didn’t matter if he was dodging a short stick or long stick. He went to the rack. For a young guy to play that well at this level in that game was incredible. It’s really incredible.”
Mix in an ESPY nomination as the Best Male College Athlete, a couple stops on the SportsCenter Top 10 list and a host of other viral plays and it’s apparent O’Neill has come of age and left little for naysayers to say.
“His last year has been incredible,” said Danowski. “Last summer in Ireland with the U21 team, then we get to the national championship game. He wins the Enners award. Then he wins the Tewaaraton. Then he gets nominated for an ESPY.
Then he plays on the U.S. team and wins gold. You really can’t do anymore than that. The only thing he could have done was win the NCAA championship and that’s the only thing that didn’t happen for him.”
O’Neill started playing lacrosse in the second grade when he joined the local Police Athletic League in his hometown of Bay Shore, N.Y., and like he did swimming and riding a bike, he picked up the stick skills quickly.
While sports came naturally to O’Neill, it is his work ethic and intrinsic desire to be great that pushed the young phenom to where he is today. He watched YouTube videos of lacrosse Hall of Famers like John Grant Jr. and Mark Matthews and then headed to the backyard attempting to replicate those skills. Little did he know nearly 15 years down the road he’d be playing alongside some of those players he looked up to — such as the U.S.’s all-time leading scorer Rob Pannell and Premier Lacrosse League MVP Matt Rambo.
As the lone collegiate player on the U.
S. Men’s National Team, O’Neill was a little unsure whether he belonged. However, it was leaders like Pannell and Rambo who assured the Duke star he was meant to be there even though he had celebrated his 21st birthday just two months prior.
“It was nice to have guys you’ve looked up to for the last five to 10 years — guys you’ve watched since you were little — tell you how much they appreciate you and how good they think you are,” O’Neill said. “That’s what they did for me. It meant a lot coming from them. They assured me that I could play.”
“We took some criticism when we took Brennan O’Neill (on the U.S. roster) because he was a junior in college,” said Danowski. “It wasn’t so much the coaches’ decision. We saw the respect he earned from the other guys who were trying out at the same time. They were wary when he had the ball.”
O’Neill’s level of play hasn’t come as a surprise to those who watched him since high school. Former Syracuse lacrosse star and current ESPN analyst Paul Carcaterra predicted O’Neill’s success when the left-handed attackman was a junior in high school.
“You could put him on a field with professional players or play at the international level and he would score three or four goals in a game right now as a 16-year-old. He’s that good,” Carcaterra told USA Lacrosse Magazine in 2019 when O’Neill was starting his junior season at St. Anthony’s High School.
He wasn’t 16, but at 21 years old in his senior international debut against Canada, O’Neill registered a hat trick to lead the United States to a 7-5 win that put them in control of the group and left his U.S. teammates amazed.
“That wasn’t a college kid,” said U.S. goalkeeper Blaze Riorden about O’Neill following the tournament-opening win. “That was a grown man out there.”
While Riorden wasn’t referring to his 6-2 and 225-pound stature, O’Neill has always been an imposing figure physically. His mother, Diana O’Neill, carried his birth certificate with her throughout his youth lacrosse career when people questioned whether he belonged in the age group.
Five years into his lacrosse journey and standing at 6-feet already O’Neill earned a spot on the Bay Shore High School varsity squad as an eighth grader and led Long Island with 99 points that season.
The next year he made the move to perennial power St. Anthony’s, where he went on to lead the Friars to the state title as a junior, scoring seven goals in the championship.
After leading the nation with 97 points, O’Neill picked up college lacrosse’s top honor, the Tewaaraton Award
Despite all the attention and accolades O’Neill has received, you’d never know it by how he carries himself. Quiet and incredibly modest, O’Neill is an unassuming star. He works hard in the weight room, on the lacrosse field and in the classroom, while leaving his teammates in awe at plays he makes every day at practice.
He scored 55 points as a Duke freshman on a stacked attack unit, upped his output to 74 points as a sophomore as the Blue Devils failed to make the postseason for the first time since 2004. Returning with a focus and a little extra motivation from that year’s early finish to the season, O’Neill led the nation with 97 points, pushed Duke to the 2023 NCAA championship game and won nearly every award possible.
“(The individual awards are) part of sports I guess,” O’Neill said. “I don’t really think about all of that, about how much my name is announced or how much publicity we get. I just go out and have fun and play.”
When is O’Neill having the most fun? When he gets to celebrate with his teammates on and off the field. He will send oohs and aahs through a stadium with his patented fake-shot to face-dodge goal or a textbook 100 mph overhand shot, but he’ll barely celebrate. However, when a teammate hits the twine, his ebullience can’t be contained. That’s who he is.
After wins he relishes the locker room celebration. He reluctantly does postgame interviews and press conferences, partially because he doesn’t enjoy talking about himself, but especially because he hates missing those moments with his teammates.
“Brennan is one of the most humble and unselfish players I’ve ever coached,” said Danowski. “We have to tell him that we will let him know when he’s shooting too much.
He loves his teammates, and his teammates love him. He’s such a wonderful kid.”
The numbers support Danowski’s statement as O’Neill led the team and ranked sixth nationally with 42 assists to go with his 55 goals. He was the lone Division I player to rank in the top 20 in assists, goals and points per game this season.
After a particularly inspiring performance in Duke’s NCAA quarterfinal win over Michigan, where O’Neill dropped in six goals and an assist, including a ridiculous behind-the-back goal, O’Neill was ho-hum about his performance. And when you ask him about the goal that was No. 7 on SportsCenter, he says he was just having fun.
“I got to five-and-five and that’s something we pride ourselves on here as attackmen at Duke,” O’Neill said. “I was just having fun with it. I don’t really think about it, just when the opportunity comes, I’ll do it. I don’t go into it thinking I’m going to do it, it just happens. I just felt like it was a good time to do it.”
A little over two weeks later following a tough loss to Notre Dame in the national championship game, O’Neill stood on the stage in Washington, D.
C., holding the Tewaaraton Award trophy and credited his teammates for his success.
“Over my years of playing lacrosse there are endless people who helped me get here, but my teammates especially,” said O’Neill. “I couldn’t have won this award without great teammates and the Duke coaching staff.”
The trophy currently resides on a stand in his bedroom at the off-campus house he shares with three teammates. He is not one to flaunt it around and have it be the centerpiece to the house — so rather it sits as a reminder of what he’s accomplished and what he has left to do.
“It’s really cool to look at,” O’Neill said. “It makes you want to work harder. Obviously, I’d rather have a different trophy and it’s something that reminds me every day (of the other trophy I don’t have). I’m so thankful for it, but it reminds me every day (of the work left to do).”
It’s that attitude, unknown to many, that is undeniably important to Duke and Team USA’s success. After all, O’Neill doesn’t just influence the outcome of a game from a goals-and-assists perspective, he makes his teammates better simply by being himself.
“He pushes me to be better,” 28-year-old attackman for Team USA Matt Rambo said “I just love the kid. He’s like the nicest, most genuine person. He’s in college and he balled out on the biggest stage in the world. If I could help him break his shell, I’m honored.”
For O’Neill, being able to be his authentic self — reserved yet inclined to whip out a sneaky funny retort on occasion — and develop friendships is what he cherishes the most about playing lacrosse.
“I think relationships off the field are something that will last longer with me than any individual success,” O’Neill said. “The (Duke) guys off the field this year were just so amazing. Everyone is themselves and any chance we get to spend together as a team. That is something you miss every year when the season is over, the guys being around. It’s not like we talk about (lacrosse) that much, it’s more about being friends. The off-field relationships are something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
O’Neill will take a much-needed break from competition but mark your calendars for February 2024 to catch the Duke star celebrating with his teammates at Koskinen Stadium.