Rivier's Robert DelPrete, one of the returnees from last year, celebrates the Raiders' emotional 2025GNAC title win over Lasell last May at Joanne Merrill Field. (Telegrap hfile photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – The 2025 season ended with a tough one-sided NCAA second round tourney loss, but it was by far the best ever for Rivier University men’s lacrosse.

That’s because it inclued the program’s first Great Northeast Athletic Conference championship, its first NCAA tourney berth, it’s first NCAA tourney home game and first NCAA tourney win ever (20-10 vs. Mass Maritime) before it all ended in the second round at Bowdoin.

So last May, one would have expected Raiders coach Jay Delanoy to take some time off and smell the roses.

He took two days.

“It is what it is,” Delanoy said. “I took two days off, then started going to high school games and recruiting.”

It took Delanoy at least a decade – he’s been on the job for 13 seasons – to get to where Rivier lacrosse is today as it has already recorded a win over Plymouth State to start the 2026 season. From the days on playing at a turf field on the hill with a small fence around it and fans seated in lawn chairs, to the palace the team plays on the same site today, Merrill Field. From when the goal was to make the GNAC tourney, then host a home game, to now winning it all.

Does Rivier lacrosse have a new image?

“I don’t think so,” Delanoy said. “I think what we try to do is work every day, get better every day, ask every member of the team to be the best version of themselves they can be, and help everybody on their right and their left to be the best person that teammate can be. It’s always been the way.”

And, as Delanoy said, “I don’t think anything gets easier – ever.”

Still, from the outside, Rivier lacrosse has to have the Division III world looking a little up than down or straight across.

“It was obviously great exposure to get to the level we got to,” Delanoy said. “A lot more inquiries with interest in playing for the program. But, you know, as great as that whole experience was, that experience is over and it’s time to go back to work on this season.”

Well, the GNAC coaches think that Rivier’s experience might continue, as the Raiders were voted the preseason pick in the conference despite losing a ton of talent to graduation, etc. They got seven first place votes to Lasell’s four and edged the Lasers 157-155 in total points. Lasell was the team they beat in the GNAC Final 9-7 in a game marked with several weather delays.

How did Delanoy like that?

“That’s not the way I voted it,” Delanoy said, with a little chuckle. “If you look at last year’s results, there’s only one deviant in the actual poll in the top seven.”

Emmanuel, Delanoy says, returns the most players who were on the field. Lasell and Saint Joeseph’s of Connecticut are perrenial contenders, St. Joe’s of Maine in Delanoy’s eyes are improved, and Dean College will be competitive. Those are a host of good teams, and the question is has the level conference-wide improved?

“The conference has improved every year,” Delanoy said. “Every year I’ve been here it’s been better and better lacrosse.”

Delanoy values recuiting high school talent more so than living and dying by the transfer portal. Proof of that is the fact he brought in about 18 freshmen for his recruiting class. The portal he uses if a player he knows about is available, helping to build roster depth, etc.

“I think the portal is a great thing for the athletes to an extent,” Delanoy said. “But it’s not the end all be all. It’s another avenue. The bread and butter I look at is high school recruiting. A lot of the transfer portal stuff you could see 100 kids in there but you’ve never seen them play before.”

Delanoy speaks for himself, but he feels that across Division III “It’s a pretty good 50-50 mix on how coaches choose to approach the portal.Obviously I don’t fault anybody for however they want to do their thing. But I don’t go on the portal to look for guys to mass email. But if we see someone that we already knew, already recruited, we might reach out.

But I think I told you the same thing last year. The only transfer we had reached out to us.”

That was Cole Ronalter, who was a defensive midfielder, and he had been recruited by Riv, didn’t enjoy where he was and reached out after he was in the portal. And this year the Raiders have just one more transfer, a goalie from Merrimack who actually played club lacrosse. He’ll be in the mix for goaltending, but the main guy will likely be sophomore Jake Lydon, who played in one game last year, coming in as a freshman from Central Catholic (Lawrence, Mass.).

Now, as for this year’s team, the returning starters are few and far between. Key ones are defender Scott Miller, Renalter as a defensive middie, midfielder and captain Sean Callinan, who had 18 points in 2025. There’s also senior faceoff specialist Owen McDuffie who was a GNAC Third Team player.

“We’ve got a lot of guys, there’s some sophomores that got some quality time last year and there’s some juniors who got some quality time,” Delanoy said. “There’s guys returning that got some quality time that have to take their opportunity with the lion’s share of the minutes out there and get the right things done.”

Other key players who can take that step are sophomores Aiden Conley (nine goals last year), Mason Schultz, james DelPrete (eight goals, assist), and,with the roster turnover, Delanoy all his freshmen will be able to get “a chance to contribute.” And one has to feel with 18 of them, the odds are in the Raiders’ favor that they’ll have talent in this class.

The 18 is equal to the most he’s brought in, and most of them had already committed before the successful post season. For the returning players, Delanoy hopes last year’s experience enables them to raise the level of their game. Young athletes can either be motivated to equal or surpass the previous team’s accomplishments, or they might take it all for granted.

Delanoy feels it will be the former.

“I think they understand how much work needs to be done, and how much work it takes, and that nothing’s given to you, you have to earn everything,” he said. “That mentality.”

What’s the strength of this team? Delanoy says the senior class and it’s leadership. “It’s not a big class but it’s concentrated in leaders,” he said. “We could have more captains than we do but we limit how many captains we carry.”

Tactically, Delanoy doesn’t have feel yet as to what this team will do very well on the field.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “In fall ball, we had a bunch of practices that we weren’t super-crazy-ecstatic about.”

The Raiders played their fall ball game against the only team that beat them last year in the regular season, Roger Williams, “and we faired much better than we thought we would looking at the practices that we had,” Delanoy said.

Delanoy feels the defensively the team will be good, and it will also still have the high lacrosse IQ it had last year.

“We have good lacrosse IQ,” Delanoy said. “It’s just spread out over all four classes. It’s not senior and graduate class concentrated as much as it was.”

Delanoy is looking for a bigger sample size. A few games sample size.

“When you can blow a whistle and stop everything and fix it immediately is much different than when officials are blowing the whistles and you only get two time outs a half,” he said.

It hasn’t been the mild winters of the past couple of years, so while the Raiders are on Merrill Field a lot, they have spent some time indoors nearby at a facility in Tyngsborough, Mass.

“We’re going to be competitive in every game that we’ve got on the schedule,” Delanoysaid. “We’ve just got a young group that needs to learn everything it takes to come out on the right side as the results.”

It’s been that way for the Raiders over the last several years, but it took some time. When did Delanoy feel he had a program? That was simple. When he began filling the roster with recruits rather than inexperienced fill-ins who were still valuable as they held the fort.

“Second or third year in,” Delanoy said. “As soon as we had a roster that didn’t include basketball players helping out, soccer players helping out. Those players helped out tremendously. As soon as we had a roster of all lacrosse players…”

Also, Delanoy feels he has the support of the entire university.

“The support of the university has been tremendous the whole time, and every department on campus works together to make athletics a co-curricular activity, not a separated activity,” he said. “It’s a great place to work, great people to work with.”

Delanoy says he has seen the image of Rivier athletics change a bit over the last five years or so.

“There’s been a little bit more of a focus on it,” he said. “So when Rivier decides what needs to be paid attention to, and they pay attention to it, they do it very, very well.”

And in 2025, the Raiders did men’s lacrosse very, very well. Delanoy thinks back to when the program was surprised watching the selection show that it would host a game. “It was great to utilize that facility in that way, it was fantastic,” Delanoy said. As Delanoy said, “Everything about last year was great.”

But now it’s time to start anew. With no days off.