On Saturday afternoon senior Matt Nelligan’s overtime goal lifted the men’s lacrosse team to a win over SUNY-Cortland and there was pandemonium. Students actually rushed the field. No exaggeration.

It’s been that kind of year for a team with nine seniors and 10 juniors. This is the season where everything was supposed to go right, and has so far. Except one thing.

Junior midfielder Matt Ruhnke was supposed to be on the field Saturday. He was supposed to be winning face-offs like Halliburton wins oil contracts because that’s what he’s been doing the past two seasons.

But Ruhnke wasn’t on the field. He was in Connecticut, lying in his bed recovering from the surgery he had four days earlier to repair a torn ACL. He listened to the game on the radio.

“It was weird because I still had the same butterflies,” he said. “But all I could really do was kind of just pray we’d win.”

A month ago Ruhnke was sprinting during a drill in the Hill Center when he went to make a cut and felt his knee give out. He tried to get up, but fell right back down. At the end of practice he tried again, but it was the same story.

On March 18, he underwent an operation to repair his knee ligament, and on Saturday he had his ear pressed to the radio, like a kid from the 1930s listening to a baseball game.

“I felt like I was in ‘Remember the Titans,’” Ruhnke said, referring to Gerry Bertier, who was paralyzed before the Titans’ championship game. “Except not that bad.”

Things, of course, can always be worse.

Ruhnke still has the opportunity to be on the sidelines, something he took full advantage of before heading home for surgery. He was at every practice and made the spring break trip to California.

He spent his time mainly working with sophomore Nick Neuman and freshman Michael Hennessy, who have stepped up to fill the face-off void he left. He’s clearly doing a good job because Nelligan’s game-winning goal came off a Neuman face-off win.

“I know he’s teaching them all his moves,” senior captain Logan Bobzien said. “He’s definitely still a big part of the team.”

Even with all the support, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s like Ruhnke went to bed on Christmas Eve and woke up on Dec. 26. This wasn’t the season he wanted to miss. But that’s life, right? And Ruhnke can only do his best to roll with the punches.   

“If all I can do is offer moral support, then that’s what I’ll do,” he said.

There aren’t too many morals better than that.