The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Yale faceoff specialist Ierlan taken No. 1 in MLL Draft
It was quite a productive evening for prospective professionals on the Yale men’s lacrosse team. Five players, including three of the top eight picks, in the annual Major League Lacrosse college draft, held remotely via teleconference on Monday, were Bulldogs.
T.D. Ierlan, Yale’s recordsetting faceoff specialist, was taken by the New York Lizards as the No. 1 overall selection.
He becomes the first Yale player ever taken first overall in the 20-year history of the draft. It’s the third successive season a faceoff specialist was drafted No. 1 overall. Denver’s Trevor Baptiste was the top pick of Boston in the 2018 draft; Towson’s Alex Woodall went first to Ohio last year.
Will Weitzel, a senior long-stick midfielder at Yale, was also a first-round pick, going sixth overall to the Chesapeake Bayhawks. Aiden Hynes, a senior defender at Yale, went in the second round (eighth overall) to the Connecticut Hammerheads.
Other Yale players taken were attacker Matt Gaudet, a third-round pick of the Philadelphia Barrage, and Will Renz, a midfielder, who went in the seventh round to Connecticut.
Ierlan, a resident of Victor, New York, was a finalist for the Tewaaraton Award in 2019 after leading the nation in faceoff win percentage. He holds 10 NCAA records, including single-season and career faceoff wins, faceoff win percentage and groundballs. He also set a singlegame NCAA record as a junior by going 26-for-26 on faceoffs against Harvard.
A transfer from Albany in 2018, Ierlan earned firstteam All-America honors each of the past two seasons and helped Yale to the NCAA championship game last year.
Weitzel, a native of Newton, Massachusetts, was a first-team All-New England selection as a sophomore and junior. Hynes, from Mahopac, New York, was a second-team all-Ivy League pick as a freshman and junior. Inside Lacrosse named him a first-team preseason All-American this spring.
Gaudet, from Hamilton, Ontario, was named most outstanding player of the Final Four in 2018, when Yale defeated Duke to win the national title. He is third on Yale’s career goals scored list with 142, including 51 as a junior.
Renz, from Rockville Center, New York, was a second-team All-New England pick as a junior.
Three members of Yale’s senior class who went undrafted, team captain Jackson Morrill, Lucas Cotler and Brian Ward, have all entered the NCAA’s transfer portal and plan to finish their college careers as graduate students.