Former Sewanhaka Lacrosse Star to be Honored by Tewaaraton Foundation

The Tewaaraton Foundation has named former and Cornell lacrosse star Eamon McEneaney as the recipient of the second annual Tewaaraton Legends Award.

McEneaney passed away during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 while working in securities for Cantor Fitzgerald. His wife Bonnie will accept the award in his honor at the Tewaaraton Award Ceremony, May 31 at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

McEneaney is the second recipient following former Syracuse lacrosse star and NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown, also a Long Island native from Manhasset, who was the inaugural recipient of the Tewaaraton Legends Award in 2011.

A three-time All-American lacrosse player at Cornell (1975-77), McEneaney led the Big Red to consecutive undefeated seasons and NCAA Division I titles in 1976 and 1977. As a sophomore in 1975, he earned the Turnbull Award as the nation’s best attackman and was named the United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association (USILA) Player of the Year.

Selected as the most outstanding player of the 1977 NCAA championship game, McEneaney went on to represent the United States in the 1978 World Lacrosse Championships. He was inducted into the Cornell Sports Hall of Fame in 1982 and the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1993.

In 1995, he was named to the NCAA's Silver Anniversary Lacrosse Team as one of the top 25 players of the first quarter century of NCAA lacrosse.

The Tewaaraton Legends Award is presented annually to one recipient who played college lacrosse prior to 2001, the first year in which the Tewaaraton Award was presented. Recipients are honored on the basis that their collegiate performance would have earned them a Tewaaraton Award, had the award existed when they played, according to the foundation.

“Eamon is a symbol for all that the Tewaaraton Award represents – excellence, effort and enthusiasm for the game,” said Jeff Harvey, Chairman of The Tewaaraton Foundation, in a statement. “We look forward to celebrating his exceptional life and lacrosse career.”

“I can not imagine a more worthy recipient of The Tewaaraton Foundation’s Legends Award, as Eamon McEneaney is a true legend by any measure,” said J. Andrew Noel, Jr., The Meakem*Smith Director of Athletics and Physical Education at Cornell University, in a statement. “Not only does he universally rate as one of the most talented and unselfish athletes to pick up a lacrosse stick, but he made an even more profound impact through his competitive spirit, courage, leadership and generosity.”

In the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, he is credited with helping to save 65 employees whom he led down a stairwell, thick with black smoke, by organizing a human chain.

“Eamon is often touted as the toughest athlete, 'pound for pound,' that ever wore a Cornell jersey,” said Noel. “I have never heard this reputation challenged. We have all been fortunate to be touched, directly or indirectly, by the legacy he has left to the game he loved.”