Danvers, Massachusetts – There are programs that win championships. Then there is St. John’s Prep lacrosse, which has quietly turned the MIAA Division 1 title game into a standing annual appointment.
Five consecutive state championships. Five springs in a row where the Eagles walked off the field holding a trophy while someone else went home empty. Now coach John Pynchon and his group are back, and the question everyone in Massachusetts high school lacrosse is asking is whether they can make it six.
The short answer, based on everything this program has shown over the past three seasons, is that you should not bet against them.
Prep opened the 2026 season in March with a 13 to 1 demolition of third ranked Acton Boxborough, and the statement was clear from the opening faceoff. Will Crawford, the Providence commit and the team’s primary faceoff specialist, was virtually untouchable.
Attack Ryan McCarthy, who is headed to Utah, scored five of his six goals before halftime. It was the kind of performance that reminded everyone in the state why nobody has beaten St. John’s Prep in a Massachusetts game since May 2023.
That is not a typo. They have not lost to an in state opponent in over three years.
Pynchon has been building this program the right way for years, and what stands out about his approach is how little he lets the legacy become a burden.
When reporters ask about the championship streak, he redirects toward practice habits and process.
He talks about a pie chart the team uses where the majority of the season is defined by what happens in practice rather than on game day. That philosophy has not produced complacency. If anything, it has produced the opposite.
McCarthy put it plainly after the season opener. He talked about how much this group had watched and learned from the seniors who carried the program through the last five runs. Now it was their turn. There was no hesitation in how he said it.
What makes this chase so compelling from a historical perspective is that it has never been done before in Massachusetts.
Five straight was already the record. Six would place the Eagles in territory that no boys lacrosse program in MIAA history has ever reached.
It would also cement Pynchon as one of the most successful coaches the state has ever produced at the high school level.
The competition will be there. BC High has been the Eagles’ most consistent challenger over the years, and the two Catholic Conference rivals have met in some of the most memorable state finals this sport has seen in Massachusetts.
Lincoln Sudbury is always dangerous. There are other programs with talent and motivation and the memory of falling short.
But Prep keeps showing up in June and finding a way. Last year it took overtime, a last second goal from senior Luke Kelly, to hold off the latest challenge. The margin was razor thin and it did not matter. They got the title anyway.
That ability to win close games, to win the ugly ones when everything breaks down and it comes down to one possession, is what separates dynasties from good teams. Good teams win when everything goes right. Dynasties win when nothing does.
St. John’s Prep has been doing this for five years and the program does not look like it is running out of gas. The new roster has the talent.
It has the experience of watching their predecessors do it the hard way. And it has a coaching staff that understands exactly what it takes.
Six straight is not a given. Nothing in sports ever is. But if you are looking for the team most likely to make history in Massachusetts this June, the Eagles out of Danvers are a pretty reasonable place to start.
