D

elaney Sweitzer’s historic 2023 season ended in heartbreak. Tied 7-7 versus Boston College with a trip to the national championship on the line, the Eagles were awarded a free-position shot with under four minutes remaining.

Kayla Martello beat Sweitzer over her left shoulder, ultimately ending SU’s magical season. Sweitzer struggled, giving up eight goals on 11 shots. But she didn’t dwell on the loss for long. She knew it was just another step in her journey.

“Mentally I was like ‘Alright, on to the next,’” Sweitzer said. “I knew I could learn, get better and improve.”

Days after the season ended, Sweitzer reached out to a few familiar voices: Mike Gvozden, Meg Taylor and Colleen Magarity. The three played an integral role in her winning the ACC and IWLCA Goalkeeper of the Year. Coming off the best season of her career in 2023, Sweitzer went back to what got her to that point — training with the Goaliesmith and “Camp Colleen” training groups. They’ve helped her reach the top of the goalie mountain. Now, in her fifth and final season, she hopes to maintain that position.

Though in the beginning, Sweitzer faced a long, winding road to the top. She started her career at the University of Southern California, failing to garner playing time before transferring to SU after two seasons. Gvozden served as a volunteer assistant goalie coach at USC and instantly built a connection with Sweitzer.

While at USC, Gvozden, along with his brother Andrew, worked on starting Goaliesmith — a company based out of Maryland that specializes in goalkeeping training. Gvozden was a national-championship-winning goalie at John Hopkins in 2007. In 2018, the company became an LLC and in 2020, as Goaliesmith began to take off, Gvozden left his job at USC and went all in.

“Delaney seemed cut from the same cloth that Goaliesmith was built on,” Gvozden said. “The same style, very tenacious, very competitive, very eager to improve but also one of the most fun people to have on the field and Delaney, the way she plays, is very much the Goaliesmith style.”

Though Gvozden was no longer her in-season coach, he became one of Sweitzer’s go-to trainers. Sweitzer quickly got involved with Goaliesmith as it grew in popularity, often making the two-hour drive from Hatfield, Pennsylvania, to Columbia, Maryland. After a career year, Sweitzer went back to train with Goaliesmith this offseason.

Coming off the BC game where she recorded a .273 save percentage, Gvozden expected Sweitzer to be rattled and rethink her process. Up until that game, Sweitzer had just two games in 2023 with a save percentage under .350 (Duke and North Carolina).

Yet it was the opposite. A few days after the loss to BC, Sweitzer sent a picture of her and Boston College’s goalie Shea Dolce to Gvozden and Taylor from after the game. She came into the offseason proud of what she accomplished and ready to move on. It gave Gvozden more confidence in her ability to pick it up after a bad game, something he sees as a trait of the best.

“There was no sense of panic or doubt,” Gvozden said. “There was just a ‘I’m pissed we lost. Let’s get back to work.’”

In 2023, from Aug. 7-9, the top women’s goalies in college lacrosse flocked to Blandair Park in Columbia, Maryland, for The Goaliesmith Experience, the company’s premier summer event. At the sessions, Sweitzer, along with top goalies like Dolce and Maryland’s Emily Sterling, improved her craft.

Cindy Zhang | Digital Design Director

“It’s like our goalie crew. We love learning from each other,” Sterling said. “We all play obviously the same position but we all play it in such different ways.”

Sterling describes the experience as a “positive environment” where the goalies constantly bounce ideas off each other. According to Gvozden, almost every Division I team is represented at the event.

The goalkeeper position often isolates the athlete on the field. With Goaliesmith, the company is bringing them all together, often into one cage.

“It creates a community where these goalies at the top of their game can train together and learn from each other,” Gvozden said. “It’s a nice scenario where they’re all training and competing alongside each other but against each other and it’s all facilitated in a growth mindset.”

At the event, Sweitzer was grouped with the other goalies into one goal, where they competed for every rep. After an extensive warmup, the groups got into competition-based training sessions, including save contests.

“You don’t want to be the only goalie not making those saves for your group,” Taylor, the first-ever goalie to win the Tewaaraton award, said. “There’s a lot of pressure that comes with that just like when you’re in a game. That’s kind of the Goaliesmith way: being able to handle the pressure.”

The drills vary from practices that cause the athlete to get outside the crease and push an offense out of its zone to defending against trick shots and quick-stick attempts.

Goaliesmith’s innovative coaching style is what has helped Sweitzer and countless goalies improve. Gvozden’s reasoning behind starting the company began because of a curriculum gap he noticed while training goalies individually. Offensive schemes had advanced while goalie techniques became outdated. Rather than attempting to conform all of their athletes into one specific playing style, Goaliesmith elevates each player individually based on their strengths and weaknesses.

Over her training sessions, Sweitzer learned how to use her 5-foot-9 frame to her advantage. By staying athletic and manipulating shooters, Sweitzer ranked top 10 in the country in total saves (185) and save percentage (50.5%), while helping SU to a program-best 15-0 start in 2023.

Cindy Zhang | Digital Design Director

After Sweitzer trained with Goaliesmith this past summer, Syracuse goalie coach Jason Gebhardt saw significant improvements in her passing ability. Getting the ball up to SU’s potent attack is vital to its success.

When Sweitzer wasn’t training with Goaliesmith this summer, she continued to train with high-level competition. As a part of “Camp Colleen,” Sweitzer trained with some of the top women’s lacrosse players in the Philadelphia region — including Sweitzer’s twin sister, Savannah, Rachel Clark (Boston College), Lucy Pearson (Stanford) as well as Olivia Dirks and Darcy Felter (North Carolina).

The group, named by the players after coach Magarity, meets five to six times a week during the summer. They often train at Limitless Philly (Magarity’s facility) on strength and conditioning and at William Penn Charter School to work on tactical skills. The Sweitzer twins played for Magarity’s club team, Big 4 HHH (head, heart, hustle), since the summer going into their eighth-grade season. When they went off to college, they wanted a place to train at home, prompting the start of Camp Colleen.

As the 2024 season neared, Sweitzer went back to Maryland over winter break, working with Gvozden and Taylor as a coach for the younger girls’ groups at Goaliesmith for its Winter Week. In this environment, Sweitzer helped aspiring college athletes while communicating frequently with two of the people she often looks to for guidance.

Through her time at SU, Sweitzer has racked up a flurry of personal accolades. Heading into 2024, she continues to get national recognition, as USA Lacrosse Magazine named her a preseason All-American and the Preseason Goalie of the Year. But with one year remaining, it’s Sweitzer’s last shot at a national title.

“What we’re seeing now is the results of three or four years behind the scenes,” Gvozden said. “And now that it’s her in there, it’s like kill or be killed. And she’s ready for it.”

Photograph Courtesy of Syracuse Athletics

Published on January 31, 2024 at 10:56 pm

Contact Aiden at: amstepan@syr.edu | @AidenStepansky