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- 1Gary Gait
Gary Gait unveiled the "Air Gait" in the 1988 NCAA semifinal against Penn, leaping from behind the goal and dunking the ball over the crease for two goals — a move so effective the NCAA outlawed that type of shot shortly afterward. Gait anchored Syracuse to three straight national championships from 1988 to 1990. He finished his Syracuse career as the program's all-time leading goal-scorer with 192 goals, and his single-season mark of 70 goals stood as an NCAA record until 2008. He still holds NCAA tournament records for most goals in a game (9), most points in a game (12), and most career tournament goals (50). Gait's professional career spanned three different leagues across more than a decade: three National Lacrosse League indoor titles (1991, 1994-95), three Major League Lacrosse titles (2001-02, 2005), and three Mann Cups (1991, 1997, 1999) in Canadian box lacrosse, along with a 2006 world championship with Team Canada. Gait's combination of a rule-changing signature move and championship-level dominance across three professional leagues in two different lacrosse disciplines has made him the player most consistently cited as the greatest in the sport's history.
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0 - 2Paul Rabil
Paul Rabil went first overall in the 2008 Major League Lacrosse draft and retired as the most prolific scorer in professional outdoor lacrosse history, finishing with 657 career points across 14 pro seasons, plus another 161 points over five indoor seasons. He won the MLL's MVP award twice, in 2009 and 2011, and the league's Offensive Player of the Year award three times, in 2009, 2011, and 2012, while making seven MLL All-Star teams and winning league titles in 2011 and 2015. In 2018, Rabil co-founded the Premier Lacrosse League with his brother Mike, a new outdoor league built specifically to address longstanding player-pay and broadcast-exposure problems in the sport, and he played three seasons in the league he'd helped create (2019-2021) before retiring. His combination of a record-setting professional scoring career and his direct role co-founding the Premier Lacrosse League has made Rabil one of the most significant figures in lacrosse history, both as a player and as an institution-builder — a duality recognized when he was elected to the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2024.
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0 - 3Casey Powell
Casey Powell, the eldest of Syracuse's three Powell brothers, was a four-time collegiate All-American, earning first-team honors in 1996, 1997, and 1998, and won the Raymond Enners Award as the sport's national player of the year in both 1997 and 1998, plus national midfielder of the year in 1996 and national attackman of the year in 1998. He was part of Syracuse's 1995 national championship team, earning All-Tournament honors that year among four total All-Tournament selections, and he closed his Syracuse career ranked second in program history with 287 points and fourth with 158 goals — numbers that stood out even on a roster that included his own brothers. All three Powell brothers wore jersey No. 22 at Syracuse across their overlapping careers, a shared number that became closely associated with the family's dominance of the program through the mid-to-late 1990s and into the 2000s. Casey Powell's combination of a national championship, back-to-back national player of the year awards, and his place atop Syracuse's all-time scoring charts has made him one of the foundational figures in the family that came to define an entire era of Syracuse lacrosse.
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0 - 4Mikey Powell
Mikey Powell, the youngest of the three Powell brothers, was a four-time First Team All-American at Syracuse, a level of sustained individual recognition across all four college seasons that neither of his older brothers matched during their own Syracuse careers. His behind-the-back passes and no-look finishes, captured on tape during Syracuse's early-2000s championship runs, circulated widely among lacrosse coaches and players well before highlight clips were standard viewing, and helped establish a more improvisational, basketball-influenced style of offensive play at the college level. After Syracuse, Powell played professionally for the Baltimore Bayhawks and Boston Cannons and represented the United States at the 2002 and 2006 World Lacrosse Championships, earning All-World Team honors on both occasions. Mikey Powell's combination of an unmatched four-time All-American college career and his internationally recognized playmaking style has made him the individual talent most frequently cited when discussing the Powell family's collective influence on the sport.
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0 - 5Rob Pannell
Rob Pannell won the 2013 Tewaaraton Trophy after a senior season at Cornell in which he scored 102 points, the most ever posted by a Tewaaraton winner, and he closed his college career as the NCAA Division I all-time career points leader with 354, while also becoming the first three-time Ivy League Player of the Year in men's lacrosse history. Selected as MLL Rookie of the Year in 2013, Pannell went on to win the league's 2015 championship and its 2018 MVP award, adding two Offensive Player of the Year awards (2016, 2018) and 12 total MLL/PLL All-Star selections across his professional career. By mid-2026, Pannell had become professional lacrosse's all-time career points leader, a distinction Cornell's athletic department specifically noted as the capstone to a career that began with his record-setting college scoring output more than a decade earlier. Pannell's combination of the most points ever scored by a Tewaaraton winner and his eventual rise to professional lacrosse's all-time scoring record has made him one of the most statistically dominant offensive players the sport has produced at both the college and pro level.
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0 - 6Kristen Kjellman
Kristen Kjellman led Northwestern to three straight national championships from 2005 to 2007, going 77-5 across her four seasons with a 13-1 record in NCAA tournament play, and became the first lacrosse player of either gender to win the Tewaaraton Trophy in consecutive seasons, taking the award in both 2006 and 2007. She left Northwestern as the program's all-time leader in both goals (250) and points (349), and she still holds the NCAA all-time record for career tournament goals (39) as well as the NCAA record for career draw controls (268) at a 3.29-per-game average. Kjellman was the only four-year All-American in Northwestern women's lacrosse history, earning first-team honors three times, and she was named national midfielder of the year three times during a stretch when her program was in the process of building modern women's lacrosse's most dominant dynasty. Her combination of an unmatched consecutive-year Tewaaraton double and NCAA tournament scoring and draw-control records that still stand has made Kjellman one of the most statistically decorated players in the history of women's college lacrosse.
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