X-Factor: Mason Kohn hopes to revamp SU’s faceoff unit after switching from hockey

M

ason Kohn’s collegiate lacrosse career started in a snack closet. It’ll likely end as the faceoff specialist for the sport’s most iconic collegiate program.

It was late February 2022 — two weeks into the season — when Kohn arrived in the Tufts lacrosse locker room. He looked around but saw no available lockers. He asked head coach Casey D’Annolfo where to put his stuff. D’Annolfo led Kohn to a small food closet at the end of the locker room.

“It was very humbling,” Kohn said.

Kohn was a depth piece. For the next six weeks, he dressed in the closet, with players occasionally popping in and asking for a granola bar. Originally asked to join the lacrosse team to help teammates get extra practice reps, Kohn never expected to see the field. But by the end of his junior season, Kohn was a starter and began his reign as Division III’s top faceoff specialist.

Kohn’s original dream of playing in the NHL took him to junior hockey tournaments around the United States, but a love for lacrosse persisted. Kohn played hockey at Tufts, before joining the lacrosse team his junior season. Now, he’s tasked with revamping Syracuse’s faceoff position, which consistently held back a talented team last season.

“He basically took three years off of lacrosse and then came back and was the best in the country at what he did. That doesn’t happen,” D’Annolfo said.

Kohn’s collegiate career began in 2020 after Tufts fell to Rochester Institute of Technology in the NCAA Tournament semifinals, losing the faceoff battle 24-13. Players always saw Kohn in the weight room and knew he played lacrosse in high school. They approached Kohn about playing, who obliged because he “just wanted to compete.”

D’Annolfo joked he had “no idea if (Kohn) was going to be any good” and came in with “very low expectations.” Kohn never played under new rules that forced faceoff specialists to start standing up instead of on a knee.

But three weeks into the season, Kohn was consistently beating Tuft’s top faceoff players. D’Annolfo went from thinking of Kohn as a third-stringer to a starter.

“I was like, ‘oh my god, like, one, this kid’s going to take my spot and two, he’s going to help us win a lot of games,’” said Aidan Hesse, a former Tufts faceoff specialist.

Hesse was shocked at Kohn’s abilities, especially his quick hands and physical presence. Kohn’s ability to make in-game adjustments and counter opponents’ moves helped too, Torrey Pines High School head coach Jono Zissi noted.

“A lot of those guys get anxious, they jump the whistle, they’re nervous and they get in their own heads. He just likes to laugh at those kids,” Zissi said. “The best way to describe him is that he’s just built different.”

Kohn’s winding path through junior hockey started to come to a close when he was a teenager. He joined the San Diego Junior Gulls in the North American Prospects Hockey League. The team tried to become a AAA team and compete with other NHL junior teams around California, Kohn’s father, Drew, said.

That idea was eventually shot down, leaving Kohn with limited options. He could’ve spent over five hours in a car each day traveling to the Los Angeles Kings or Anaheim Ducks junior hockey facilities. Instead, he stayed home to play for the San Diego Sabers in the Western States Hockey League. Later that year, he was drafted by the Muskegon Lumberjack in the 2017 USHL draft.

At that point, Kohn realized it was time to move away and “get serious.” A couple of months later, he signed with the Boston Junior Bruins.

With the Bruins, Kohn attended Shrewsbury (MA) High School and joined its lacrosse team. During a period when Kohn was trying to be a professional, he felt it was also important to enjoy something with kids his own age.

Kohn earned an offer to play lacrosse at Hartford, but he wanted to keep playing hockey. He moved on to the Corpus Christi IceRays in the North American Hockey League, attending online school and living with a younger couple.

Drew said there was pressure on young players to perform because if you were at risk of “not making the next level” if you didn’t have consistent production.

“It kind of does transform into a job…it’s also like a perform or suffer kind of a job,” Drew said.

Cole Ross | Digital Design Editor

Army and a few other schools showed interest, but they wanted Kohn to play two more years and come in as a 20-year-old freshman, something he wasn’t comfortable with. Then Tufts reached out in fall 2018, telling his parents he could come back home for his last semester at Torrey Pines before enrolling. Kohn committed in February 2019.

Kohn helped Torey Pines to a CIF Lacrosse State championship berth but tore his ACL, PCL and MCL while getting extra reps after practice. It kept him on the sidelines for both sports his freshman season and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic complicated joining the lacrosse team.

It was a gradual process of re-integrating Kohn back into the sport. After joining the team in February 2022, D’Annolfo kept Kohn out of workouts for the first week — since lacrosse works different muscles than hockey. It took several weeks before he was practicing at a similar level to his teammates.

Through Tufts’ first seven games that season, Kohn only took at least 10 faceoffs in a single game once. But after Hesse suffered an injury in late April, Kohn received more in-game reps.

His first collegiate start came against Bowdoin in the NESCAC championship game, where he won 17-of-30 faceoffs. Two games later in the NCAA Sweet 16, Kohn’s matchup was Joe Post — a 2022 USA Lacrosse All-American. Kohn held his own again, winning 14-of-24 faceoffs to solidify his starting role.

“Those two things happen within like a two-week period and you’re like ‘OK this isn’t fluky,’” D’Annolfo said.

In a 26-15 loss to RIT in the semifinal, Kohn won nearly 66% of his faceoffs but struggled to get the ball out of his stick and feed teammates. During his limited availability that offseason, Kohn refined his stick skills, playing wall ball by himself to make sure the same mistakes didn’t reoccur.

In 20 games last season, Kohn won nearly 72% of his faceoffs and earned the Division III specialist of the year. Tufts made the national championship and as the season wore on, Kohn thought more about playing a fifth year in D-I.

“Him in March of junior year versus him like, by the time we’re playing the national championship last year, were like two completely different people,” former teammate and current-Virginia attacker Jack Boyden said.

Kohn was admitted into UCLA Law School in fall 2022, but his on-field performances attracted some of the nation’s top programs.

Cindy Zhang | Digital Design Director

While on the bus heading to Tufts’ regular-season finale against Bowdoin, Kohn got a call from his sister Mia, a lacrosse player at San Diego State whose coach was Taylor Gait, Gary Gait’s daughter. Taylor told Mia — who relayed to Kohn — that Gait wanted in.

When Mia called, Kohn was thrilled but said he had to prepare for a game, so he hung up and said they’d talk later. Over the next couple weeks, the two discussed Syracuse, but Kohn wanted to win the national title with Tufts first.

Despite winning nearly 80% of his faceoffs in the national championship against Salisbury, Tufts fell 17-12.

Kohn’s lacrosse career at Tufts started with minimal expectations. He was one of the last guys on the roster. He got changed in a snack closet. Kohn wasn’t expected to play, but as time went on, he evolved and so did the expectations.

Now with Syracuse, Kohn has the chance to be the missing piece on a team with lofty expectations in 2024.

“The end goal is to win the national championship,” he said. “That’s the standard of whether or not you succeed or not in a season, especially at a program like (Syracuse).

“I’d be lying if I said that’s not why I came back to play fifth year.”

Photograph courtesy of Syracuse Athletics