East Hampton - A surfer since he was in second grade, Tyler Maguire wasn't one to waste the sunshine. He'd hoped though that this Memorial Day would be different, that he and the Stevenson men's lacrosse team, ranked No. 1 nearly all season long, would be vying for a Division III national championship.

The odds-on favorite to take home the title after winning its first 14 games and ousting Division III power Salisbury in the quarterfinals, Stevenson looked like a lock for the finals when it ran into Gettysburg, a team it had defeated 16-6 early in the season, in the semis. The hurdle proved to be higher than they had anticipated. Gettysburg prevailed 12-7 on the Mustangs' home field.

"We put our hearts and souls into the season," Maguire said. "We were trying to do it for us, for the seniors, and what it boils down to is people don't remember who was in the semis. We made big steps for the team and for the school. Everyone was psyched to get as far as we did, but our goal was Boston [site of the national championship game] and we fell short."

East Hampton grad Tyler Maguire hopes he and the Stevenson men's lacrosse team can earn a berth in the Division III men's lacrosse championship and then win it.

Stevenson finished its season with a 17-2 record, nearly doubling its opponents' output over the course of the year. That they stumbled shy of their goal has motivated Maguire and his Mustang cohorts for the 2010 season. However, some of the firepower from this year is gone, meaning that Maguire, a complementary piece on the attack, must rev it up offensively.

This year, he scored six goals and assisted on three others, which don't accurately project his importance to the team. One statistic vital to lacrosse that often gets upstaged by goals and assists is groundballs, which is where Maguire chimed in most often, scooping up 60 on the season. It left him just two behind the team leader, Brett Yoder. Without the groundball artists, the faceoff men's efforts are often in vain and the attack never gets going. Maguire made sure it did.

"I prided myself in that," Maguire said. "I made sure that I came out of that scrum with the ball and just tried to push it down the field and get something going for the team."

Prior to this year, the program had had just one All-American in its history. This season, the Mustangs had six, including junior Steve Kazimir, who was named the United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association (USILA) Division III Attackman of the Year. Still, Head Coach Paul Cantabene noted that that personnel can't put up the numbers they do without the dirty work being done.

"I really think you're only as good as your role players," Cantabene said. "You always have stars who are really good, but role players make everything go. They don't need glory, they just play good defense, get groundballs, and come out and work hard every day. That's what Tyler did. If you don't have guys like that, you aren't very good."

It's a wonder that Maguire ever enrolled at Dickinson, which is located about 20 minutes north of Baltimore and formerly was entitled Villa Julie College. Upon graduating from East Hampton, a four-year player in football and lacrosse, Maguire went west to Whittier College outside Los Angeles. He concluded that while getting a quality education, he could continue surfing and playing lax at the club level. The Whittier program lost its luster when its head coach left and began a downward spiral. It changed Maguire's mentality entirely.

Although Tyler Maguire chipped in with a goal sporadically this season, his coach, Paul Cantabene, will look to him to increase his production next year.

"I figured I can always surf once I get out of college, but I can't play lacrosse all my life," he said. Cantabene phoned Maguire on a regular basis; after a visit to campus, Maguire signed on the dotted line.

Montauk's Lee Vosburgh, who scored 97 goals for UMass in the late 1970s and early '80s, was among the early lacrosse descendants in East Hampton, twice earning All-America honors for the Minutemen. Vosburgh joined forces with Ralph Naglieri, the Bonackers' original varsity coach who is now an assistant under Mike Vitulli, to form a youth program in the community. Maguire and his friends – Mark Scioscia, Drew Falkenhans, Will Schumann, Zach Brenneman and a young Kyle Siegel (now a Stevenson teammate) – all picked up a stick and gradually began to piece together the skills and strategy of the game.

"We all played football together but this was a new physical sport that we'd never played," Maguire recalled. "It's a great game. It's a combination of hockey and some other field sport and it's fast-moving."

They went through the ranks together, and in Maguire's senior year, Bonac clinched its first-ever postseason berth. Although it endured a loss to Comsewogue in the opening round, they had planted the seeds in what was foreign soil to that point – the playoffs. Several from that crew went on to play collegiately, including Scioscia to Villanova, Brenneman, one of Bonac's most celebrated players, to Notre Dame, and eventually Siegel to join Maguire at Stevenson. They left an impression on those coming through the ranks.

Maguire is keeping his options open for when his lacrosse career comes to a close. The interdisciplinary major – a combination of history and business – will consider going into video production like his sister and several aunts and uncles. If not, the surf industry may come calling or he might look into commercial fishing, his dad's occupation. Although he hasn't locked into a career path, his focus on the lacrosse pitch is crystal clear.

"We're definitely coming into next season hungrier than ever," Maguire said. "It was so hard for us to walk off that field knowing we were so close and harder to look at seniors because it was their last hurrah. We'll have a serious driving force behind us. As long as we work hard in the off-season and come into the season confident but not overconfident, I think we can do it."