Butler’s Davis sets single-season lacrosse goals mark
BUTLER TWP — Twirling his stick as he cradled the ball near the 35-yard line, Ayden Davis wasn’t in any hurry.
A North Hills defender poked and prodded, but the Butler senior standout remained patient. He knew the opening that he was looking for.
The zenith of Davis’ 86-goal season — a Golden Tornado boys lacrosse program high-water mark — followed.
“I was just kind of sitting there waiting for a time to go,” he said. “I was just holding the ball with my back turned to the defender, just waiting. He made a move that he shouldn’t have. He tried to attack my back side going toward the sideline, so I just spun inside ... It created a lot of space.”
Five yards later, Davis feigned a pass to a teammate, drawing another defender that way. He brushed by one more obstacle and leaped into the air at the 20-yard line, splitting his legs and firing off a seamless one-handed shot through them.
“It’s a pretty unique shot to do in a game,” Davis said of the highlight reel goal. “You don’t see many people doing it.”
It made for a pretty cool TikTok post.
“That was my first thought, I can’t even lie,” Davis admitted.
Along with a small sense of relief that the try found the mesh, knowing it was a display his coach wouldn’t have been as fond of had it missed the mark.
“The moment that I saw his left hand leave his stick, I knew he was going to try to do something like that,” Golden Tornado coach Justin Steiner said. “I try to coach lacrosse as (how it is in) its purest form. Nothing really flashy, you’re just putting it in the back of the net. You’re making those simple plays because those ones are the ones that go the farthest.
“He makes goals like that and he’s good enough to make goals like that.”
On the high school level, he’d never attempted a shot like that, though he’d practiced it regularly when he was younger. By his lonesome, he’d lost track of time going against the air in his backyard, perfecting spins, fakes, and shots to employ later.
“I just acted like I had someone guarding me and came up with different moves that I would do in an actual game,” Davis said. “I just went through the concepts and kind of perfected it every single time I did that move.”
Crafty and sometimes flashy, Davis wasn’t hard to discern on the turf.
“Any time we played any opponent, he was by far the most athletic and best lacrosse player on the field at all times,” Steiner said. “He plays with that confidence. He really believes he is the best on the field and he’ll just take over.
“He’ll go from one end of the field the whole way down to the other and then score or do some athletic move that’s just so great to watch.”
Davis' talents weren’t solely developed when no one was watching. He also played for travel teams in the off-season, which slowed the prep game down for him.
“It definitely paid off,” Davis said of his heavy workload. “Those travel teams definitely pushed my limits to be a better player. ... The competition of those tournaments I went to was top-notch, playing the best of the best in my class.
“Coming to play high school lacrosse was definitely a lot easier. ... It was a lot easier just for me to play freely and not under pressure.”
Opposing defenses did their best to rattle him, keying in on him throughout the year. Davis used the attention he drew to create chances for his teammates.
“It’s an honor for teams to be heavily focused on me because it shows me I’m a big threat,” Davis said. “I just had to wait for the opportunities to come to me, basically.”
Steiner said that his preference to ramp up the team’s regular-season competition will make it hard for anyone to surpass Davis on the leaderboards.
“There’s probably never going to be anyone that runs up the score to get to AD’s records ever again, unless I leave and someone switches the schedule again,” Steiner said. “He knows that (with) the way the program is going, his name will not be forgotten.”
