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s the only goaltender for the Newbury Park High School (California) girls varsity lacrosse team, Daniella Guyette rarely had a day off. The only type of reprieve she and her teammates got was during film sessions when they’d watch Division I lacrosse tape.
To emulate the aggression and play style of top D-I teams, the group often analyzed matchups between Syracuse and Boston College. Guyette dedicated hours each week to studying highlights of SU’s recent standout goalies, from Asa Goldstock to Delaney Sweitzer, aiming to incorporate elements of their game into her own.
She hoped to eventually find herself in their shoes.
“We watched a lot of Syracuse’s games during high school, and I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that we knew Daniella was going there,” former Newbury Park defender Charly Taylor said. “We always talked about how she was gonna be on that team one day.”
Fast forward to today, the moment has come full circle for Guyette. As she competed with her high school and club teams growing up, Guyette forged her own path to D-I lacrosse in Newbury Park. Through training individually with past college greats and attending national showcases that put her on Syracuse’s radar, Guyette earned her spot on the Orange. Now, following Sweitzer’s transfer to Northwestern this past offseason, Guyette is poised to become SU’s starting goalie in 2025.
Lacrosse wasn’t the first sport Guyette tried as a kid, largely due to its lack of popularity in her hometown of Newbury Park. As a first grader, she played baseball and football with the boys her age despite her dad’s warning that “girls don’t play those sports.” Undeterred, Guyette continued to play both sports from first to fifth grade.
By playing as a tight end on the gridiron and as a catcher on the diamond, Guyette learned the importance of taking a hit to make a play.
“In football you always take the hits, no worries. In baseball, putting on all the gear, I was like, ‘This is home.’ I think (I gained) that mentality of being able to bear the brunt of any hit just to make sure we win,” Guyette said.
Going into sixth grade, Guyette fully committed to lacrosse and joined her local middle school team, the Newbury Park Prowlers, but was unsure where she wanted to play.
Early in Guyette’s first season with the team, its goalie announced she was moving to the East Coast. The goaltending spot was vacant with the season-opener just days away. Guyette volunteered to take on the role.
Guided by her experience playing football and baseball, Guyette showed potential in her first year between the pipes. Michelle Yarger, head coach of the local LA Aces club team at the time, quickly took notice of Guyette’s poise in the box. The Aces were also in need of a reliable goaltender, and just over halfway through the Prowlers’ season, she offered Guyette the starting job.
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Over the next three years, Yarger helped Guyette and her teammates gain numerous opportunities to develop. Guyette quickly became the sole goalie for three different club teams.
“(Yarger) kind of took Daniella and I under her wing and showed us the world of lacrosse in Los Angeles, just because it was much bigger down there (than in Newbury Park),” former Newbury Park attacker Sophia Laubner said.
For most students beginning their high school careers, Guyette’s vigorous athletic and academic schedule would’ve been too much to handle. But for her, it was simply what she felt was necessary to keep improving as a goalie. By the time she finished middle school, Guyette had already competed against top talent from lacrosse hotbeds in California, including San Diego, Orange County and LA.
“Daniella would be in sixth, seventh and eighth grade playing on three different club teams, doing eight games a Saturday and eight games a Sunday, because that’s just how it was for her. She thrived off of the pressure,” Yarger said.
When Guyette joined Newbury High School in 2018, Yarger followed her to the Panthers. Due to the lack of talent around her during her freshman season with the Panthers, Guyette struggled and finished with a lowly 17.9% save percentage. She used it as motivation to find new ways to build her game.
She started by connecting with former D-I goalies to request one-on-one training sessions, such as Stanford’s Lyndsey Munoz and Johns Hopkins’ KC Emerson. Occurring almost three days per week, Guyette often traveled to high school fields or worked on small grass pads at public parks across the LA area.
Occasionally, Guyette would even drive almost two hours from home to learn from Megan Ward, a two-time national champion and the 2016 NCAA Goalie of the Year with North Carolina.
“It was mostly just little tweaks, but mainly their biggest help was just building the foundation of my game,” Guyette said.
When Guyette’s sophomore season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of her teammates saw their sophomore season as a chance to relax and enjoy time with family. However, since lacrosse had been Guyette’s outlet since sixth grade, she didn’t take a break.
Instead, she attended college showcase camps across the country, including ones hosted by D-I powerhouses like Northwestern, UNC and Syracuse. Before she returned to club and high school play as a junior, she’d received offers from those programs and more. Without much hesitation, she committed to the Orange on Sept. 20, 2020.
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Before joining SU, Guyette made a lasting impact at Newbury Park during her junior and senior seasons. Named both team captain and team MVP each season, Guyette led the Panthers to the 2021 CIF Southern Section Championship game and back-to-back conference championships.
“I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have such a great goalie my whole childhood and high school career until I got to college,” former Newbury Park defender Sophia Fadler said. “When I got there I was like, ‘Wow, I thought I was gonna play up and now I’m playing down, because I don’t have Daniella.’”
But just months after Guyette started with SU, she suffered a torn ACL in a preseason workout, forcing her to watch from the sidelines for the entire 2023 campaign. Still, she made the most of the year. During games and practices, she carefully watched and asked Sweitzer — SU’s No. 1 goalie at the time — questions between plays.
As a sophomore, Guyette was finally given a small taste of D-I action and made seven appearances in the box. She even briefly took over in net against Virginia and Clemson amid SU’s run to the ACC Championship game.
While all signs point toward the junior taking over as Syracuse’s top goalie in 2025, Guyette refuses to let complacency get the best of her. She knows from her time in California that nothing is guaranteed, and every time she takes the field, she has to earn it.
“It is very, very hard to get recruited D-I coming from Newbury Park and how she did it is incredible,” Yarger said. “Daniella had to put in so much hard work, and she did a lot of it on her own. She single-handedly got herself to Syracuse.”
Photograph Courtesy of SU Athletics
Published on January 29, 2025 at 11:26 pm
Contact Matthew: mgray06@syr.edu