Lucia Iandolo
The spring sports season has provided strong performances by many first-year student athletes across Ithaca College athletics. Ivan Kisic of the men's tennis team has stepped up for the program thus far.
As the 2024-25 academic year comes to a close, the student-athletes of Ithaca College find themselves amid another season of spring sports. For several Bombers teams, they have looked toward first-year players for immediate contributions and their faith in recent recruits has been rewarded.
IC women’s lacrosse has been among Division III’s most successful women’s lacrosse programs in the last decade, making and advancing in six of the nine NCAA tournaments held since 2016. Coming off of an 18-2 season, the program’s best win percentage of its tournament runs, the Bombers needed to completely refresh as 60.7% of the 2024 team’s points graduated following the season. First-year attacker/midfielder Kathryn Scallon has been among the new faces turned to this season, and she credited her new teammates with helping her get settled in so quickly.
“It’s still hard adjusting to playing with different people,” Scallon said. “But my teammates have been so supportive and have helped me understand our style of play. I honestly think every day we get, we play better together, and I understand how I can improve and how I can make an impact.”
That impact came right out of the gate for Scallon, as she fired the team’s first goal of the season from the eight-meter arc just ten minutes into her Feb. 23 debut against SUNY Brockport. She went on to finish the 11-3 rout with a hat-trick of goals, a performance which earned her the inaugural Liberty League Championship Tournament women’s lacrosse rookie of the week honors just a day later. So far, Scallon has started all twelve games this season and tallied 11 goals, the most of any first-year student since 2022. She said her experience at IC has been a source of encouragement for not just herself, but also her sister Sara, a high school junior and verbal commit to the University of Vermont recruited for lacrosse.
“It’s so different in college,” Scallon said. “Whenever my sister’s having a rough day — I always tell her that it’s going to be so much better in college, and that you need to just keep working for it because when you get to college, there’s gonna be people surrounding you, helping you get better and having your back, no matter what.”
A month after Scallon’s award, another first-year Bomber saw his performance rewarded with Liberty League honors. In just his second start of the season against St. Lawrence University on March 22, first-year pitcher/first baseman Ethan Murley took a perfect game into the fourth before a line drive single broke it up. He would finish his six inning outing with just three hits, one earned run, and three walks allowed while striking out seven. The 90-pitch outing was enough to earn Murley a Liberty League pitcher of the week award, something he appreciates while remaining focused on the next outing.
“Baseball’s a very hard mental game, and if you overcomplicate it, that’s when things will go wrong,” Murley said. “So just reverting back to a mindset where I can get these guys out, I know I’m better than them, I know I can strike them out. That mentality for me has helped me kind of just guide my success.”
Despite his first-year status, Murley has been one of the Bombers’ most reliable starters, and is among the best pitchers in the entire region. His 2.93 ERA is sixth in the Liberty League, and he is top five in the conference in opposing batting average at .218 and total runs allowed with 13, tied for fourth place. As he has moved up in the rotation this season, Andrew Parker — Ithaca College’s assistant director of athletics for sports performance — noted that he has done nothing but improve in the weight room as well.
“He picked up our base patterns really quickly,” Parker said. “With our freshmen, we don’t try to rush that process. We try to get as much positive adaptation out of simple as we can before we start working complex, because our goal is always long-term athletic development. Ethan really kind of took that step and really tried to be savagely good at basics and push himself to the point where he was mastering those basic skills.”
Since the spring season began, eleven first-year athletes across seven different sports have earned weekly honors from the Liberty League. In addition to those already named, the honorees include Ivan Kisic of men’s tennis; goalkeeper Mikaela Dattilo of women’s lacrosse; sprinter Aynisha McQuillar of women’s track and field; Beth Roberts of women’s rowing; and Liam Baker, Andrew Cheely and Andrew Coit of men’s rowing. Most recently, thrower Luke Ellor and infielder/pitcher Ethan Fantel took home rookie of the week honors for the week of April 14 in men’s track and field and baseball, respectively.
These honors reflect a larger trend across the Bombers’ athletic department this season, as first-year players across all varsity sports have stepped up when called upon.
“When it comes to general success as a first–year, they’re obviously skilled in their sport, but they’re also willing to do things that are going to help them,” Parker said. “They made a mindset that that’s important to them, and they’ve seen the benefits from that. It’s hard just to pick out two, three, four, five freshmen that have done that.”