Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 6/19/20
From Press Release
After being named to the CoSIDA Academic All-America At-Large team in each of the last two years, Lehigh men’s lacrosse senior Conor Gaffney (Lenape-NJ) was recognized again, this time garnering second-team honors, as announced on Friday.
Gaffney (Duke’s LC) has now received three of the program’s four all-time Academic All-America honors, the other being Jonathan Stumpf in 2011. The At-Large honorees come from a variety of sports (not just lacrosse) and Gaffney is one of only four Division I men’s lacrosse student-athletes recognized as CoSIDA Academic All-Americans in 2020.
Gaffney also became the first Patriot League student-athlete ever named a three-time CoSIDA Academic All-American. Gaffney’s honor on Friday was just the 20th in Patriot League men’s lacrosse history, with Gaffney receiving 15 percent of the league’s all-time honors.
Named a candidate for the prestigious Senior CLASS Award, Gaffney’s academic success has been endless. He entered the spring semester with a 3.94 cumulative GPA as a double major in Mechanical Engineering and Integrated Business and Engineering (Finance).
He’s a two-time Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year, as both a sophomore and junior (the award wasn’t presented in 2020 due to the shortened season). Gaffney’s two honors have tied the Patriot League record. He is also a multi-time team Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Gaffney is a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honors Society, Pi Tau Sigma Mechanical Engineering Honors Society and American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Gaffney won the Elisha P. Wilbur Mathematics Award for the top performance in first-year engineering mathematics courses.
Since he arrived at Lehigh, Gaffney has been one of the best faceoff specialists in the nation and that continued in 2020. Through eight games, Gaffney stood ninth nationally in faceoff percentage (65.7), winning 67-of-102 with 42 groundballs. He is the Patriot League all-time record holder for career faceoff wins (669) and groundballs (391), breaking the groundball mark this season vs. Navy.
Gaffney was named a Tewaaraton Award candidate prior to the year and was an Inside Lacrosse and USILA honorable mention All-American as a junior. Gaffney was named first team All-Patriot League as a sophomore and junior, winning Faceoff Specialist of the Year his junior campaign. For his career, Gaffney has won 669-of-1047 faceoffs, shattering the program career records and holding the single-season marks for groundballs (152) and faceoff wins (249), both set as a junior.
