Report: Syracuse men’s lacrosse attackman Stephen Rehfuss enters transfer portal

The Syracuse Orange men’s lacrosse program was dealt some potentially disastrous news today with reports that attackman Stephen Rehfuss has entered the transfer portal. The news was first reported by former TNIAAM contributor Chris Jastrzembski on Twitter.

Rehfuss’s reason for entering the portal stems from an ongoing disciplinary appeals process resulting from an apparent violation of SU’s COVID-19 safety protocols.

This afternoon, Steve Infanti, sports director at News Channel 9 in Syracuse, mentioned on ESPN Radio that Rehfuss does NOT want to transfer but is keeping all his options available pending the results of the appeals process.

While Rehfuss is the only player to have currently entered the portal, Jastrzembski further reports that there are at least SIX players also involved in the appeals process, with the majority of them being offensive midfielders.

Okay, deep breath time.

Based on all these reports, it seems as if multiple players on the men’s lacrosse team violated University COVID-19 protocol in some way, which will potentially result in some form of disciplinary action.

Rehfuss is in his sixth year of college after he and all 2020 seniors were given a blanket waiver by the NCAA to return in 2021 because of the coronavirus. If a punishment is handed down that ends in a suspension for Rehfuss and others, then it seems that Rehfuss (at least) will look to transfer out and play his final season elsewhere before moving on from college.

Jastrzembski’s report that some of the other players are offensive midfielders will surely make your mind speculate and possibly assume the worst in terms of who it could be, and that’s just human nature.

Of course, the only thing speculating ever accomplishes is driving yourself crazy, so unfortunately, we’re just going to have to wait to see how this plays out. Needless to say, though, is that this appeals process could have landscape altering ramifications for Syracuse and all of Division 1 lacrosse in 2021.

Let’s just hope that it doesn't.

2021 scheduling news

Chris, who was working overtime on the Cuse men’s lacrosse front today, also reported news of ACC scheduling plans for men’s lacrosse this season.

Just as with the fall and winter sports, it appears as though lacrosse will be working with a different schedule than a typical year presents. Unlike the other sports, however, it seems that lacrosse’s regular season conference schedule will actually be expanded this year with ACC teams playing the other four teams once and two of the four teams twice, which adds up to six conference games.

Jastrzembski also tweeted that the plan is to have teams play “some non conference games as well”, with games still in the works. For the Orange, it certainly follows that we would be looking to schedule games against our close-by Upstate NY brethren like Cornell, Hobart, Colgate, Albany, etc.

Of course, all that is contingent on the various conferences and whatever their policies end up being on non conference games for lacrosse season.

As with everything else, we’ll be waiting with seriously bated breath.