Logan Lyle is on a run.
The North Allegheny senior goalie is having another standout season, trying to lead the Tigers back to the WPIAL Class 3A boys lacrosse championship game.
Lyle earned all-WPIAL Class 3A honors last season and is the last line of defense for the first-place Tigers (7-6, 4-0 in Section 2-3A), who had won five of their past six games as of April 29.
“Logan is the only reason that we are actually in a lot of these games, to be honest,” NA coach John Rullan said. “Defensively, we are good, but Logan makes saves that he shouldn’t and that an average goalie wouldn’t make.”
There is nothing average about Lyle, a three-year starter and St. John’s recruit who started playing goalie in second grade. He blocks shots, traveling upwards of 80 mph, from all distances and directions while wearing little protection other than for his head, chest, hands and groin in front of a 6-foot by 6-foot goal.
Led by Lyle, North Allegheny is allowing a WPIAL Class 3A-best 6.2 goals per game through April 29.
“I started out (the season) a little shaky,” Lyle said. “But once all the nerves calmed down, I started playing better.”
He made 14 saves in a 13-3 win at Springboro (Ohio) on April 11 and another 14 the next day in a 9-7 win at Archbishop Moeller (Ohio).
Even in defeat, Lyle has excelled against a demanding nonleague schedule dotted with top private school programs.
He made 12 saves in a 6-4 loss at St. Ignatius (Ohio) in the season’s opening week and had multiple point-blank saves in the final minute of an 8-7 loss to Kiski School on April 21.
“He’s a difference-maker,” Rullan said. “This year, I think most of the league knows he’s the difference. Last year, in our feeling, he was the best goalie in the league.”
Rullan appreciates Lyle, a 5-foot-10, 165-pound team captain who skillfully directs the Tigers defense. The coach said Lyle is the best goalie in his 24 seasons at North Allegheny.
“He’s heads above,” Rullan said.
Lacrosse is a year-round sport for Lyle. He plays club with Old Line Elite, a well-regarded Maryland-based program. This fall and summer, he said, “I was down in Maryland probably more than I was up here.”
The St. John’s staff noticed Lyle at a camp in Maryland in the summer of ‘23. St. John’s coach Justin Turri played lacrosse at Duke with Rullan’s son, Andrew, about a decade ago, and the two have stayed in touch. Turri reached out to his former Blue Devils teammate after Lyle began turning heads.
“He called my son and said, ‘Tell your dad his goalie is lighting it up here at one of the summer camps,’ ” John Rullan said. “He said, ‘Is he going (to college) anywhere?’ ”
One thing led to another, and Lyle committed to St. John’s before the 2024 high school season.
“They are really high on him coming there,” Rullan said. “They feel they got something special.”
Lyle considered Bucknell, Robert Morris and Stony Brook before picking the Big East school. He will be the first WPIAL product to play at St. John’s, according to the school’s all-time roster dating to 1981.
“The campus is beautiful, and their mentality for lacrosse really made me interested in going there,” Lyle said. “Once I visited and I talked to them, I knew it was the spot.”
Lyle’s next goal is to help North Allegheny get back to the WPIAL title game. The Tigers lost to Mt. Lebanon, 15-10, last season in the finals. The playoffs begin May 12.
Lyle believes the Tigers’ grueling nonleague schedule will harden them for the postseason.
“When we go against some of those good teams, it shows us how we need to work a little bit harder,” he said. “But it also shows we can hang with all of these nationally ranked teams. It makes us a little bit more confident when we go into WPIAL games. It toughens us up.”