The Johns Hopkins Blue Jays made the 10-minute trip up Charles Street from Homewood Field to Minnegan Stadium on May 6, 1989 with plenty of confidence.


Undefeated and ranked #1 in the polls the entire season, Hopkins already had victories over five of the nation's top 10 teams (Syracuse, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Navy).

The Jays featured one of the best defensive teams of all-time. Quint Kessenich was named the nation's top goalkeeper for the second straight season. Closed defenseman Dave Pietramala was the United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association player of the year. The other two starting defenseman, Greg Lilly and Billy Dwan, also earned All-America honors.

The Tigers featured six players, all from the Baltimore metropolitan area, who would become members of the Towson Athletics Hall of Fame: attackmen Glenn Smith (Boys Latin) and John Blatchley (Loyola), midfielders Rob Shek (Bel Air) and Lindsay Dixon (Broadneck), and defensemen Ed Stephenson (Dulaney) and Carl Beernink (Loyola).

The 13^th-ranked Tigers started the season 7-1, including a victory over #7 Penn State and was ranked in the Top 10 for a month, but came into the regular season finale with losses in three of the previous four games. Towson needed an upset to secure a spot in the NCAA Division I Tournament for the first time in school history.

The Jays entered the game with a 13-0 advantage in the all-time series.

The 3,100 fans who battled the cool and rainy conditions that night certainly got their money's worth.

Unbelievable Win
Hopkins jumped out to a 4-0 lead after the first quarter, but Carl Runk's Tigers settled the ship. The defense, led by goalie David Linthicum, close defenders Stephenson, a third team All-American, T.J. Dickens, Ben Keesey and Beernink, then a freshman defensive midfielder, held the Jays to four goals over the final 45 minutes of regulation.

"It was raining all day long and that certainly helped us because Hopkins was loaded. It slowed the game down," said Blatchley, a freshman attackman. "Dave Linthicum was coming up with save after save. We started to get momentum."

The Tigers offense then started to heat up. Towson took a 7-6 lead midway through the third quarter after Shek's unassisted goal.

"We were gaining confidence," said Smith, who led the team as a sophomore with 33 goals. "Earlier in '89, we played (eventual national champion) Syracuse in the "Day of Champions" on Long Island and lost by just a goal. We knew we were pretty good. We knew we could play with a lot of teams."

Dixon made it 8-6 with 12:08 remaining. However, Hopkins tied the game at 8 with back-to-back goals setting the stage for a dramatic finish.

With less than 30 seconds left in regulation, Towson had the ball. Runk called a timeout and drew up a play with Blatchley looking to feed Smith, coming off a Michael DeSimone screen, on the crease. Pietramala had other plans.

"I literally took three steps to my left. He just threw a wrap check that timed up perfectly with my cradle," Blatchley remembered. "The ball pops out. He gets the groundball, throws it to Quint, who gets it up field. They call timeout. I am thinking I lost this game. Luckily we came up with a stop."

The game was headed to overtime. It was the third OT contest of the season for Towson.

In the first five-minute extra session, Hopkins had the best chance at victory but Linthicum denied Brendan Kelly.

After winning the faceoff to begin the second extra stanza, Runk called timeout.

"Coach Runk goes back to me," Blatchley said. "We drew up the same play that didn't work at the end of regulation. Petro (Pietramala's nickname) tried to wrap again and was very physical behind the cage. DeSimone set the pick. Petro slipped a little. I was able to spin back and find Glenn."

Smith caught the pass and found the back of the net to give the Tigers a historic 9-8 victory, setting off at wild celebration on the field. 

"The biggest reason the play worked in overtime was Petro was on the ball," Smith said. "I got matched up with Billy Dwan instead of him. It had not worked during the game because Petro knew what was going on. Because they switched personnel, the play worked. Blatchley made the perfect feed. I got my hands free and was able to get it over Quint's shoulder."

"That was an unbelievable win," added Blatchley. "The next day, assistant coach Mark Reuss cut up all the game balls and made a plaque for each player that said "Towson-9 Hopkins-8" with a piece of the game ball on a plaque. A couple years ago, after Carl (Beernink) passed way, I showed it to my kids to let them know how important that game was to us. What Mark Reuss did stays with each of us to this day."

"That game changed our program," Smith stated. "Lacrosse was everything to me for a long time. It was like a dream. My dad took me to Hopkins games at Homewood Field when I was young. To beat Hopkins. Wow."

Leading The Local Sportscast
A mile and a half away from Minnegan Stadium at WMAR-TV, anchor Keith Mills ('79) and producer Mike Gathagan ('87) were putting together the 11 p.m. sportscast.

Earlier that afternoon in Louisville, Sunday Silence nipped Easy Goer in the 115^th running of the Kentucky Derby setting up a showdown at Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course two weeks later in the Preakness Stakes. 

The Baltimore Orioles, who rose from the ashes of a 107-loss season to battle the Toronto Blue Jays for the American League East championship that season, were hosting the Seattle Mariners in a doubleheader at Memorial Stadium.

The Towson-Hopkins game was to be the third story in the show until word of the upset hit the newsroom.

"This is Baltimore. Lacrosse is important, so we adjusted," said Mills. "The number one team just got beat in double overtime and we had video of the game winning goal. It was a decision we made quickly and to this day, it was the right one. That was what we did at Channel 2. We put emphasis on being local and there wasn't anything more local that day than Towson-Hopkins."

Carolina On My Mind?
With the win, the Tigers earned a bid into the NCAA Tournament and faced #7 North Carolina in the first round. Towson scored goals on their first four shots but the Tar Heels used an 11-2 run during the second and third quarters to win 19-8.

"Carolina had some horses," Blatchley said. "But for that whole week leading up to the game we seemed to be more focused on what we had done against Hopkins."

"The Hopkins win put us on the map," added Smith. "That win changed the way the lacrosse community looked at Towson. I worked a lot of camps that summer. I was at Gettysburg wearing my Towson gear and people asked, 'Do you play at Towson?' It changed the complexion of the program and the way people thought of it."

On Memorial Day, Syracuse defeated Johns Hopkins 13-12 for the 1989 national championship, in one of the greatest college games ever played.

"Every lacrosse fan remembers the championship between Syracuse and Hopkins at Byrd Stadium in College Park," said Blatchley. "The Gait brothers. Pietramala. The cool thing was that season we lost to Syracuse by a goal and beat Hopkins by a goal. That says a lot about how good we were in 1989."

Program Changer
The Hopkins win was victory number 191 for Runk. More than a decade earlier, the East Baltimore native guided the Tigers to the 1974 College Division national championship. That team featured All-American defenseman Wendell Thomas and eventual National Lacrosse Hall of Famers Jim Darcangelo and Bob Griebe. Runk's teams earned spots in the Division II playoffs the last seven years of the 1970's. In 1980, the Tigers moved to Division I and ended the decade with seven consecutive winning seasons.

"To beat Hopkins that night was just what Coach Runk needed to validate all of his work and all of the great players before us," Blatchley said.

With many of the core players from the '89 team, Towson went 32-9 over the next three seasons.

The 1990 Tigers went 11-2, beating Maryland for the first time in school history, but failed to earn a spot to the NCAA Tournament despite only losing to national runner-up Loyola and #10 Johns Hopkins.

Towson posted its most successful season in 1991. The Tigers advanced to the NCAA Championship game for the only time in program history, losing to top ranked North Carolina at the Carrier Dome, 18-13. Smith led the Tigers with three goals and two assists.

In the tournament, Towson knocked off three higher seeds:

• #5 Virginia (14-13) – Defensive midfielder Tony Million scored 4 goals
• #3 Princeton (14-13, 3 OT) – Blatchley to Dixon for the game winner
• #7 Maryland (15-11) – Smith leads the Tigers with 4 goals 

"The 1989 win set the table for what happened in '91," said Mills. "The shifting of the lacrosse dynamic in the Baltimore area changed when Towson finally beat Hopkins and then Loyola and Towson went to the championship games the next two seasons. It announced that this was not just a Hopkins city."

The 1992 squad went 9-3 including a victory over #1 Loyola and a second victory over Hopkins on a last second goal assisted by Blatchley. The team earned the fourth seed in the NCAA Tournament but lost to the Blue Jays in a rematch two weeks later.

Three players from the 1989 team (Shek, Dixon and Millon) represented Towson on the United States World Team. The national midfielder of the year in 1991, Shek won two world championships as a member of Team USA, capturing gold in 1994 and 1998, and later joined Darcangelo and Griebe in the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

Smith graduated in 1991 and was inducted into the school's Athletics Hall of Fame 10 years later in his first year of eligibility. A three-time All-American, he finished his career with 154 goals, the most in program history. He also had 55 assists for a total of 209 points, second on Towson's all-time list.

"The Hopkins win is more than 30 years ago and I still think about it," he said. "It is just an amazing night. Something I will never forget."

During his four-year career at Towson, Blatchley helped the Tigers compile a 41-14 record and earn three NCAA appearances. A two-time honorable mention All-American, Blatchley finished his career with 57 goals and 125 assists and his 182 career points rank him sixth on Towson's career scoring list. He shares the Towson career assists record with Griebe. Blatchley was inducted into the Towson Athletics Hall of Fame in 2004.

"We're underdogs," he said. "Everyone that I played with understood that and they liked it. It was like we have something to prove here and that is exactly what this win from '89 did to propel Towson."