Fresh off of an undefeated state championship run in 2024, Urbana’s Boys Lacrosse team was set for yet another deep playoff push in 2025. Going into the season, senior midfielder Will McLeod believed that the group “would be able to win another championship… the only thing that could stop us from doing so was ourselves,”. The Hawks’ season began as everyone expected, undefeated. In the team’s first five games, the offense averaged over seventeen goals per game, while the defense surrendered fewer than three. Very few teams throughout the state would be able to contest this level of dominance. Urbana’s head coach, Gavin Donahue, credited the early success to the defense. “I think that one of our strong points is definitely our defense. I don’t think we really had any hole from our mid to LMS to our close defenseman and our goalie,” he explained. Despite the strong start, Urbana’s team was dealt their first loss in over two years, coming at the hands of the Bullis School in a 16-7 blowout. Just a few days later, the Hawks lost to their first MPSSAA opponent, the Kent Island Buccaneers, 9-7. Following the second loss, the team’s captains, including senior midfielder Brandon Sybrant, called a players-only meeting. In this meeting, Sybrant explained that “there was definitely a lot of frustration within the team. As a team, [they] couldn’t pull together a good practice that week and [they] had to end a practice early… the meeting opened everyone’s eyes on how we aren’t untouchable,”. This meeting had an immediate impact on the team’s success. Following the loss to Kent Island, Urbana, now with an unexpected 5-2 record, quickly turned their season back to how they planned. In their next game, the Hawks defeated the Sherwood Warriors by a 16-run margin. After that, the team proceeded to win every game throughout the remainder of the regular season, concluding with a pair of shutouts against 2A state quarterfinalist Hereford and 3A state runner-up Towson. In the team’s first three playoff games, the Hawks managed to outscore their opponents 64-7. Through the eyes of Coach Donahue, the state semi-final game against the second-seeded Walt Whitman Vikings was going to be “a higher level team than what we saw in the first three rounds of the playoffs,”. The match proved to be their closest since the 9-3 victory against Catonsville, but the Hawks did secure the victory, defeating Whitman 12-7. Despite the victory and the championship game birth, Brandon Sybrant was feeling uneasy after the game, explaining that “we had so many opportunities to score and we just couldn’t,”. Before the final game, Urbana’s preparation schedule consisted of several days solely dedicated to watching film. “We broke down our Whitman film… we watched just a game of Broadneck… then the last day we filmed our practice and broke that down,” described Coach Donahue. With this schedule, he and his team felt immensely prepared going into the final game. The entire game proceeded to be a defensive showdown. At halftime, Urbana led by just one. With the narrow lead, Coach Donahue’s message to the team was simple – “Trust the process and keep grinding.”. Despite the game being a stark contrast to how well the offense typically performed, the Hawks’ five goals wound up being enough. With a final score of 5-2, for the second consecutive season, the Urbana Hawks were crowned 4A boys lacrosse champions. With eleven seniors departing the team, Coach Donahue will be counting on his current junior class, consisting of sixteen athletes, as well as the rest of the 70% of this year’s team that will be back in 2026.
