Eight Virginia men’s lacrosse players earn USILA All-American honors

With the most prominent college lacrosse All-American list being released this afternoon, eight Virginia Cavaliers earned USILA All-American honors.

Connor Shellenberger was the lone first teamer for the Wahoos. After being on the 2021 first team in 2021 as a midfielder, the Charlottesville native was one of four attackmen named this year. Despite going scoreless for the first time in his career last Sunday when UVA was eliminated by Maryland, Shellenberger led UVA in scoring for the second straight season with 76 points on the year. After earning first team honors in his first two seasons, Shellenberger has the opportunity to be just the eighth player ever (and sixth since lacrosse became an NCAA sport) to be a four time first teamer.

On the second team, defenseman Cole Kastner continued his meteoric rise this season and established himself as a lockdown on ball defender who has a penchant for taking the ball away from his opponents.

Now UVA’s all-time leader in points, Matt Moore was placed on the third team. That comes after he was on the third team last year as well, yet was somehow only honorable mention in 2019 when he scored 86 points and broke UVA’s single season points record.

Petey LaSalla joins Moore on the third team. He won 60% of his face offs this year while also rallying eight goals and dishing a pair of assists. This is LaSalla’s second appearance as a USILA All-American after being second team last season.

Then among the honorable mention names for the Wahoos were attackman Payton Cormier, two-way midfielder Jeff Conner, short-stick defensive midfielder Grayson Sallade, and close defenseman Cade Saustad.

The good news for Virginia is that all of these players but Moore are expected to return next year. On top of that, UVA has three top ten recruits coming in next season in midfielder Joey Terenzi (3rd), attackman Truit Sunderland (4th), and face-off specialist Mac Eldridge 10th) along with another five star in defender John Schroter and four more four star players.