She’s All Grown Up
A star since seventh grade, Notre Dame- bound Cortney Fortunato has one last chance to dazzle us at Northport
By Corey McLaughlin I
n her mind, on the lacrosse field, this is Cortney Fortunato’s second senior year. And she would like to end it just like the first.
By the time she scored the goal her sophomore year that delivered the New York Class A championship — with 1.3 seconds left in double-overtime of a dramatic 6-hour, 30-minute, weather- delayed and tension-filled game in Cortland — Fortunato had already played four varsity seasons for the Northport High girls’ lacrosse team. She grew up alongside a star-studded class, two years her senior, that included 10 future NCAA Division I players. She felt like she was one of them.
But when that season ended, they left and Fortunato stayed. It was her first senior year.
For a girl who made varsity as a
12-year-old, this makes sense. She’s a rarity, a special offensive talent that comes around once in a generation. Fortunato has amassed 235 points in the last two seasons alone. Asked to describe her favorite part of the game, she responded, “It’s really fun after you score a goal, and the defense is confused with what just happened. When the opportunity is there, I like to take it and have some fun with unique shots or a creative play behind the cage, or up top.” Fortunato is the only player in
Northport’s 23-year history to play varsity as a seventh-grader. Name a state or national all-star team, and she’s been on it, too. She was 15 during tryouts for the 2011 U.S. under-19 women’s national team and 16 during the competition in Hannover, Germany, which ended in a gold medal for Team USA. She led the team in scoring despite dealing with the faceguards that have become a common defensive tactic against her.
An elated Fortunato celebrates her winning goal in the 2011 New York state championship game — a feeling she wants back after a rough 2012 encore.
A Publication of US Lacrosse
Before her 17th birthday, Fortunato even made a run at the U.S. World Cup team, advancing to the second round of tryouts.
And after this year — her real senior year — the equally humble and gifted Fortunato is headed to Notre Dame. It’s where her idol played. Northport native Jill Byers, a one-time Team USA attacker and the Irish’s career leader in goals and points, is in her first season as an assistant in South Bend. Fortunato had the red carpet rolled out for her on recruiting visits. Northwestern, Maryland, Florida, North Carolina, Duke, Virginia and Georgetown all courted her. She committed to Notre Dame in the fall of her junior year. Fortunato has undeniable talent. Her stick skills, vision, lacrosse IQ, pump-fake ability and other craftiness shooting and passing make her stand out in any crowd. “She’s a great player,” said first-year Hofstra coach and 2011 Tewaaraton Award winner Shannon Smith, who, showing Fortunato’s youth and staying power, actually played against her when Smith was a senior in 2008 at West Babylon (N.Y.) High. “It will be fun to watch her in college.” Yes, Fortunato scored that clutch free-position goal in the 2011 state championship game, one of her 136 points as a sophomore, second-most on Long Island that season. It signaled a passing of the torch — three-time US Lacrosse All-American Shannon Gilroy, now a sophomore at Florida, tore her ACL scoring the go-ahead goal in overtime against Pittsford and was carried off the field, setting the stage for Fortunato’s moment.
“She was dominant for her age,” said Syracuse women’s coach Gary Gait, who was at the game. “Polished, a total laxer. That’s what you hope kids are.” But last year, the one after Fortunato’s first senior year, was a rough one by Northport standards. The Tigers finished 11-4 and, as the fourth seed, lost in the quarterfinals of the Suffolk
March 2013 >> LACROSSE MAGAZINE 37
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