Mike Preston: Toomey Not Deterred By Challenging Loyola Men’s Lacrosse Season | Commentary

Maybe if Loyola Maryland had not won a national championship in 2012, it would be easier to dismiss men’s lacrosse coach Charley Toomey after a dismal showing in 2025. But at this point, the landscape of college athletics has changed, not Toomey.

The winning culture is already in place. It’s been that way for the past 33 years at the school where Toomey has been coach for the past 20 seasons.

“I guess having a little bit of a track record helps you and they know who we are,” said Toomey, who was also the starting goalie for Loyola in the 1990 national title game loss to Syracuse. “They are great kids and they are fighting. We’re not perfect, nobody’s perfect. But I keep trying to tell them we’ve got to focus on the process and not the result. The result will come when the process is back in place.”

Toomey doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. Loyola (1-9) got a positive result in a 12-11 overtime win against Bucknell last week in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, as midfielder Brady West scored from 10 yards out nearly one minute into overtime.

Afterwards, Toomey seemed almost as happy beating Bucknell as winning the national championship.

“I mean, the guys jumping around in the locker room and smiles, joys and hugs. We broke the huddle, and I told my team to run to the fence and hug their parents,” said Toomey, who has a 185-110 record at the school.  “I felt like it was just a relief of that monkey off your back.”

Lacrosse is no different than any other sport in college athletics. Players run to the transfer portal at the end of the season and there are schools that offer NIL money. Few schools have taken advantage of the portal better more than Maryland, which is why teams like Loyola, Towson and UMBC might struggle and others like the Terps, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Syracuse reload.

Last year, Loyola had seven fifth-year starters and 12 seniors on the roster. This year’s team is composed of 19 freshmen and two transfers. During its first nine games, 21 players made their college debuts. Of the top six attackmen and midfielders from a year ago, only one is a returnee from 2024.

Then there are the injuries. Short stick defensive middle Michael Callahan has missed six games along with offensive middie Matt Dixon. Mason Graves, a faceoff specialist who was starting to emerge, has missed five games while attackman Kenan Everhart has missed two. Both top scoring midfielder Luke Murphy and starting attackman Miles Halter missed the Bucknell game.

“We’re a completely different team than the group that played Maryland and Hopkins,” said Toomey of one-goal losses in consecutive weeks in early February. “But it’s what we’ve been dealing with, and those things happen.”

Toomey has been using this season’s results as a reason to possibly change his recruiting tactics.

“We have to do more, maybe we start recruiting some guys a little bit later in the process so that we find those late bloomers even if it means recruiting next year’s class in their senior year,” he said. “Going into the portal for us might mean finding a kid that just completed his freshman or sophomore year. We have to do that, or maybe we have to get back up into Canada. As a staff, those are things we have to consider moving forward.”

When a team struggles and loses its first nine games, a coach always second guesses himself. Toomey wondered if his practices were too long or too short. He dissected practices and even checked the dinner menu.

He is now in his 33rd season on Loyola’s campus, 29 coaching and four as a player.

“I think when you go through this, you second guess everything,” Toomey said. “The amount of film that we’re going to watch? At one point last week, we were playing with four attackmen and nine mids. It was like being at the Severn School again. It was crazy, but we’re developing our bench, we’re developing freshmen that are getting opportunities to play,”.

Loyola still needs some help. The Greyhounds are led in scoring by attackman Matthew Minicus (13 goals, 20 assists), Henry Haberman (12, 6) and Brady Quinn (10, 3), but have been outscored 112-75. They have committed 172 turnovers compared to 157 for opponents and have been out hustled for groundballs, 336-286. Clears have been a problem, too.

Like most coaches when their teams struggle, they come up with catchy slogans like “keep chopping wood.” Toomey has one: “keep bulling your neck.”

He has also had former college coaches Dave Cottle (Loyola, Maryland) and Richie Meade (Navy, Furman) as sounding boards as well as Donna Woodruff, associate vice president and director of athletics.

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“I’m asking [Cottle] about ways to motivate through weeks three and four,” Toomey said. “He says have you even tried throwing him out of the locker room not wearing anything that says Loyola. I say, coach, you can’t do that any more. I will lose my job.”

Toomey has maintained his sense of humor. Beside the record and national championship, he has coached 52 All-Americans, a Tewaaraton Award winner given to the nation’s top lacrosse player in 2019 to Patrick Spencer and 28 USILA Scholar All-Americans. After winning the national title, several ACC and Big Ten schools tried to lure him away from Loyola, but he stayed.

“We’re two or three plays away from getting these wins and we’re not focused enough. And then now all of a sudden it’s eight,” Toomey said. “When we lost the Lafayette game, I brought the team in and told them I loved them. I’ve never said that to a team, but I know they care and I know that they’re hurting and we’re all hurting. And I just said, we’re in this together. We’re going to get through this together, but we have to stay together and not fracture and not point fingers.”

Maybe the Greyhounds have. They play at Towson on Tuesday at 6 p.m.

“They are under the lights, playing in Baltimore,” Toomey said. “It’s another great opportunity.”

Have a news tip? Contact Mike Preston at epreston@baltsun.com, 410-332-6467 andx.com/MikePrestonSun.