LYNNFIELD — It’s been a busy summer for former Lynnfield High soccer goalkeeper standout Dante Gesamondo.
Gesamondo spent much of the spring practicing with his Medaille University soccer teammates in what the NCAA calls the “non-tradtional offseason.” Medaille was coming off a fantastic fall season. The Mavericks won the 2022 Empire 8 Conference tournament last fall to clinch an automatic bid to the NCAA D3 Championship. While they were eliminated in the opening round by SUNY Cortland (Gesamondo did not see action), Gesamondo, a rising junior, was looking forward to a bigger and better 2023 campaign.
That all went up in smoke when Medaille announced earlier this year that it was planning to sell the school to another college.
“We knew in the spring that Medaille was negotiating a buyout with another college to keep the school going. We were just working on our offseason training. We had no idea what was coming,” Gesamondo said. “We were just preparing for the fall season the way the team always does, and then, it all hit.”
Gesamondo was minding his own business on campus, having packed up belongings to come home for the summer. Gesamondo said he watching a Buffalo television news show when he learned that the deal had fallen through because Trocair refused to assume the contracts for the athletics facilities because it had serious concerns that Medaille wasn’t legally entitled to more than $5 million it had applied for in COVID relief related tax credits,
“It was literally the day after graduation that I was watching the news on a Buffalo television station that the school was going to be permanently closed,” Gesamondo said. “We had been told in the winter that Trocaire College was going to buy out the school, but we then found out in the middle of the spring semester that they weren’t going to buy the contracts for the athletic fields. As far as we knew, we just had to find a field for the fall season. So the news that the deal had fallen through just hit us.”
Gesamondo said that, with the fall season beginning in mid-August, most schools had already finished the recruiting process the previous May.
“A lot of us worried we weren’t going to find a home,” Gesamondo said.
Gesamondo said that unlike many of the other 1,800 students scrambling to find other schools where they could continue their education, he was fortunate to be an athlete. He sprung into action and created a highlight-clip video. He posted the video on the NCAA Transfer Portal, a system that allows athletes and coaches alike to find new opportunities.
“The day I heard that news, I had my highlight video ready to go so I was in the portal the next day and able to be in communication immediately with other coaches. From then on through the summer, it was nothing but communications via email from coaches. The first day I posted, I had seven coaches contact me,” Gesamondo said. “I was really worried about finding a school, but my coach, Sean Hallas, and his staff were so helpful. He said that there would be a lot of schools that would contact me especially because of the high demand for goalies. He told me it’s always hard for coaches to find goalkeepers. I trusted him the last two years and he was right. The ball just rolled throughout the summer.”
All told, Gesamondo said he heard from representatives from 42 D1, D2 and D3 schools, averaging five phone calls a day for about two weeks, saying “my emails were just flooded.” He decided on Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY.
“The decision was very tough.” Gesamondo said. “Once the school closed, they reached out to Coach Hallas and I made the decision in mid-July.”
Gesamondo’s first day of preseason was Saturday. He said his goal is the same as it was going into the 2022 season.
“It’s definitely a new feel going into the season with a new school and new team coming off a championship with my old school. I’m looking to bring nothing but another championship ring and continue where we left off with the new guys.”
In 2022, Gesamondo started 11 games, posting a record of 4-1-6. He had a team best .769 save percentage and a 1.36 goals against average, fourth best in the Empire 8 Conference. Gesamondo earned two conference Player of the Week awards and was selected to the Empire 8 All-Conference Third Team.
As a freshman, Gesamondo appeared in 13 games with 12 starts, finishing with an .887 save percentage. Allowing just seven goals, he finished 10-1-1 with seven shutouts. He ranked first in goals against average and save percentage, and second in wins in the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference. A two-time Medaille Athlete of the Week, Gesamondo was named to the AMCC All-Conference First Team.
