Menlo News May 03, 2025

Boys’ lacrosse wins on Senior Day, celebrates 30 years

Knights talk with Menlo alum & Priory coach Jeff Wiley

Boys' lacrosse with alum and program founder Jeff Wiley and current Program Director Blake Kim.

With a nod to present and past, Menlo School boys’ lacrosse celebrated senior day with a 12-4 win over Priory in its regular-season finale Saturday evening.

After a pre-game ceremony, recognizing Tate Cohen, Jack Enright, Tyler Fernandez, Gio Magaña, Juan Lozada Tahuiton, Kyle Mahaffey, Josh Marks, David Mhatre, Carter Techel, James Wernikoff, the Knights were off and running. By the third, Menlo pulled away 8-4.

Wernikoff poured in seven goals, one assist, and picked up six groundballs. Junior Caden Chock scored twice and assisted on another. Juniors Palmer Riley and Trevor van der Pyl each had a goal and an assist. Techel added a goal and junior Tyler Hinkie an assist. Junior Noah Persily made 11 saves. Fernandez had three groundballs while Mhatre won 8 of 12 face-offs and had two groundballs.

After the game, the team met Priory assistant coach and Menlo alum Jeff Wiley, who started the Knights boys’ lacrosse program 30 years ago.

He brought together nine fellow football players that all had played club lacrosse for one season in Palo Alto. Early senior year, they talked to the administration about forming a team. The boys just needed to find a coach and build a team.

“We started recruiting as many football and soccers players we could find and we ended up with 20-plus players our first season,” Wiley said.

They had the players, and were working with NorCal US Lacrosse to find a coach, but with a few weeks before the season started, they still didn’t have a coach. Meantime, they were holding their own player practices. A week before the season started the president of NorCal Lacrosse Iliad Rodriguez volunteered. Rodriguez was a founding member of his high school Bishop O’Dowd ’86 and college San Jose State ’90 teams. In 2008, Rodriguez was inducted into the US Lacrosse-NorCal Hall of Fame, to which current coach Blake Kim and former assistant Cort were selected in 2020.

So, Wiley and his team were required to play JV our first year as a new team. The team of about 20 - half of whom had one year of lacrosse experience, and the other half had never picked up a stick before the season, went undefeated (10-0), beating all the teams in the only Bay Area league, which included St. Ignatius, Berkeley, Bishop O’Dowd, University, Marin, Lick, Palo Alto, and others. Three from that first team went on to play lacrosse in college: one at Colorado Boulder, one at Vassar, and Wiley at Cal.

Saturday’s game was a fitting senior day recognition and three decades of Menlo lacrosse. As for the near future, Menlo plays host to Sacred Heart Cathedral at 3:30 pm in a WCAL Tournament opener Monday.