Bucknell University Athletics
Bucknell Men's Lax Places League-High Eight on All-Patriot League Team, Three on All-Academic Team, Fedorjaka Named PL Coach of Year
4/26/2011 8:00:00 AM | Men's Lacrosse
April 26, 2011
LEWISBURG, Pa. - The 12th-ranked Bucknell men's lacrosse team was rewarded for its outstanding regular season with a league-high eight players named to the All-Patriot League Team on Tuesday. Among the Bison honored were First Team All-Patriot League selections Billy Eisenreich (Chatham, N.J./Chatham), Mike Huffner (Elmira, N.Y./Notre Dame) and Charlie Streep (New Canaan, Conn./Loomis-Chaffee), while head coach Frank Fedorjaka was named Patriot League Coach of the Year for the second time.
Bucknell had five players named to the All-Patriot League Second Team: senior defensive midfielder Jake Clarke (Cos Cob, Conn./Greenwich), senior midfielder Mike Danylyshyn (Fairport, N.Y./Fairport), sophomore goalie Kyle Feeney (Greenwich, Conn./Greenwich), senior attackman Ryan Klipstein (Califon, N.J./Rutgers Prep) and senior defenseman Alex Lyons (Owings Mills, Md./Boys' Latin).
Not only did Bucknell's eight all-conference selections lead the league - Army was next with six - but it was the most for the Bison in 21 years in the Patriot League. The 1996 and 2001 teams both had seven all-league picks in championship seasons.
In addition, Lyons, senior defenseman John Collett (Randolph, N.J./Delbarton) and senior defensive midfielder Jason Foreit (Norwalk, Conn./Norwalk) were all named to the inaugural Patriot League All-Academic Team. Bucknell's three All-Academic picks were tied for the most in the league with Army.
Bucknell is 12-2 overall and finished a perfect 6-0 in the Patriot League this season. The Bison will be the No. 1 seed and host the Patriot League Tournament this weekend.
Two of Bucknell's three First Team selections were first-time choices. Huffner and Eisenreich were both honored for the first time after breakout seasons, while Streep is back on the team after earning Second Team honors last year.
Huffner, a sophomore defenseman who missed most of last season with an injury, played his way into the starting lineup five games into 2011 and has quickly become one of the Patriot League's top stoppers. He earned Patriot League Defensive Player of the Week honors on Monday after keeping 31-goal scorer and First Team All-Patriot League attackman Peter Baum of Colgate without a goal in Saturday's title-clinching 12-7 win.
Eisenreich stepped up his game significantly as a junior and is a major reason why Bucknell has one of the nation's top-scoring midfields. Despite missing all or most of five games with a mid-season injury, Eisenreich has 16 goals, 11 assists and 27 points, all career highs.
Eisenreich's breakout game came in a big early-season overtime win over Navy, when he had seven points on two goals and five assists, including the helper on Todd Heritage's overtime goal. Eisenreich went on to post nine goals and six assists over a four-game stretch, but then he was derailed by the injury for almost a month. He came back in stunning fashion, pouring in a career-high eight points with four goals and four assists in a come-from-behind 12-11 win over Lehigh. Eisenreich scored the final three goals of that contest to complete the rally.
Among the Patriot League leaders, Eisenreich ranks 10th in goals and points and ninth in assists on a per-game basis.
Streep has been a familiar thorn in the side of Patriot League opponents since he stepped into the lineup immediately as a freshman in 2009. The former Patriot League Rookie of the Year is having another outstanding season, with 19 goals and eight assists while playing both midfield and attack. He had a five-point game with three goals and two assists in the season-opener against Canisius, and he scored four big goals in the win over Lehigh two weeks ago.
Klipstein and Clarke have now earned All-Patriot League honors at two different positions. Klipstein was a First Team midfielder last season, and this year he moved to attack and was named to the Second Team after another very productive season.
Klipstein has been the team scoring leader just about the entire season, and he currently has 45 points on 27 goals and 18 assists. He ranks third in the Patriot League in total points and is fifth in both goals and assists. Klipstein is the only player in the Patriot League ranked in the top five in both goals and assists.
He has been remarkably consistent this season, producing multiple points in every game and three or more points in 11 of the 14 contests. He had three goals and an assist in a big early-season win over a Villanova team now ranked in the top 10 nationally, and he has also compiled hat tricks against Penn, Navy, Lafayette and Lehigh. In last week's big win at Colgate, Klipstein tallied five points with two goals and a career-high-tying three assists.
Clarke was the First Team All-Patriot League faceoff man in both 2009 and 2010, and in a nod to his versatility, this year he earned an all-league citation as a defensive midfielder. Clarke is best-known for his faceoff work, as he has shattered Bucknell's all-time records for faceoff wins (403), faceoff percentage (.571) and ground balls (280). He has been excellent again at the X this season, but he has been just as valuable throughout his career as a short-stick defensive midfielder.
This year Clarke is part of a defense that ranks seventh nationally in fewest goals allowed at 7.29. He ranks second in the league and 11th in the nation with 88 ground balls, which is just 10 shy of his own single-season record set in 2009. In fact, Clarke now owns the top three ground ball totals in program history, and his 280 career GBs are 105 more than the second-place man on the list.
Lyons is another repeat all-leaguer, as he also earned Second Team All-Patriot League accolades in 2010. Lyons is a close defenseman and is another key cog in Bucknell's standout defensive corps. One of the top takeaway defenders in the league, he ranked third nationally in caused turnovers last season and once again leads the team in that category this season. Lyons' 53 ground balls are the most among Bucknell's long-pole players, and he has a team-high 21 caused turnovers.
This is the first All-Patriot League mention for both Danylyshyn and Feeney. Danylyshyn has been a four-year regular at both attack and midfield and has been one of the league's more underrated players. This season has been perhaps his best yet, as he ranks second on the team with 34 points on 18 goals and 16 assists. The point and assist totals are both personal bests, while he is just two shy of his career high for goals in a season.
Danylyshyn's best game came in one of the team's biggest games. He tallied four goals and an assist in Saturday's 12-7 win at Colgate, earning Patriot League Offensive Player of the Week honors for his efforts. He is the only other player on the team besides Klipstein with a point in every game this season. He also had five-point showings against both Navy and Holy Cross, and like Klipstein, he has surpassed the 100-point plateau this season.
After taking over as Bucknell's starting goalie just a few games into his freshman season, Feeney has really taken off as a sophomore. He ranks eighth nationally in goals-against average at 7.30, and his .547 save percentage ranks second in the Patriot League.
Feeney is a three-time Patriot League Goalie of the Week in 2011. He was one of the top stars in Bucknell's big 8-7 win at Army with an 11-save performance that included a number of big stops in crunch time. Feeney made nine of his 10 saves against Colgate in the second half. He posted a season-high 14 saves in an 8-6 win over nationally ranked Penn State and had 13 in a 10-8 win over current top-10 Villanova.
This is the first year that the Patriot League has named a 12-player All-Academic Team. Bucknell produced three of those 12 honorees in seniors Collett, Foreit and Lyons.
Collett has a 3.48 cumulative grade-point average in elementary education. He is a team co-captain and three-year starting close defenseman, and along with teammate Klipstein was the co-recipient of the 2010 Patriot League Sportsmanship Award. The duo created the "A Bison Never Forgets" program, in which funds are raised to send care packages to former college lacrosse players now serving overseas in the armed forces. Collett has also volunteered as a tutor at local elementary schools, and he completed his student-teaching requirement in a fourth-grade class last fall.
Foreit carries a 3.53 GPA in economics and classics and has been a member of the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll every year so far. Foreit interned last summer with Gault Energy in Westport, Conn.. He has volunteered with Americans Supporting Americans, sending letters and personal items to the 101st Airborne Unit in Iraq. He is a member of the Bucknell Dining Committee and serves on the Bucknell Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.
On the field, Foreit is a key member of the Bison short-stick defensive midfield rotation, and he often switches to a long pole in man-down situations. He is one of the team's top transition midfielders, as evidenced by his two-assist performance against Colgate last week.
Lyons boasts a 3.31 GPA while majoring in both civil & environmental engineering and business management for engineers. He is a member of American Society of Civil Engineers, and in each of the last two summers he has interned with construction firms in the Baltimore area.
For Fedorjaka, this is the second time in the last three years he has been crowned Patriot League Coach of the Year. He also won the award in 2009 after leading the Bison to a 6-0 sweep of the Patriot League. Fedorjaka is in his sixth season as Bucknell's head coach after succeeding the legendary Sid Jamieson, and he now has a 57-31 record at Bucknell and a 96-62 overall record, including a five-year stint at Franklin & Marshall.
The Bison, who are ranked 12th nationally and are tied for the national lead in victories, will be the No. 1 seed at this week's Patriot League Tournament. Bucknell will face fourth-seeded Lehigh on Friday at 7:45 p.m., with the winner moving on to face the Colgate-Army winner in the championship on Sunday at 3 p.m. All tournament games will air live on the CBS Sports Network.
