E-mail Coach DeLuca (bad6@cornell.edu)
The Mario St. George Boiardi Associate Head Coach of Men's Lacrosse
Ben DeLuca enters his ninth season as a member of head coach Jeff Tambroni’s coaching staff. Promoted to associate head coach following the 2007 season, DeLuca serves as the team’s defensive coordinator, helping the Big Red to be among the best in the nation defensively, year-in and year-out.
In total, DeLuca has spent 14 years on East Hill, spending four years at Cornell as a player before serving as an assistant coach for two seasons. A brief two-year hiatus took DeLuca away from Ithaca, but he returned prior to the 2002 season and he was promoted to the top assistant position under Coach Tambroni in the summer of 2003. He became the first Mario St. George Boiardi Assistant Coach of Men's Lacrosse the following year.
DeLuca was named the IMLCA Assistant Coach of the Year after the 2007 season in which Cornell had its best campaign in 19 years, finishing with a 15-1 record and advancing to the national semifinals for the first time since the 1988 season.
Since rejoining the coaching staff in 2002, DeLuca has helped the Big Red to an undefeated regular season (13-0), four 11-win seasons, a pair of nine-win seasons and six Ivy League titles. Under his tutelage, nine of Cornell's defensive players have earned first-team All-Ivy, as well as All-America honors.
DeLuca has been the Big Red's defensive coordinator for the past five seasons and during that time the Cornell defense has become consistently one of the best in the nation. This past season, the Big Red ranked 15th in man-down defense (.755) and 20th in scoring defense (8.53). Last season, the defensive unit finished the year ranked fifth in the nation, allowing only 7.00 goals per game, and Mitch Belisle '07 became Cornell's first winner of the USILA's Schmeisser Cup, given to the nation's best defender, since Chris Kane garnered the award in 1978. In 2006, the Big Red ranked second in the nation in scoring defense (5.93 gpg.) and fourth overall in man-down defense (.780), after ranking 12th in the country in scoring defense (7.93 gpg.) in 2005 and finishing the 2004 season ranked 10th in the nation in man-down defense (.810).
DeLuca donned the Carnelian Red and White for three years under legendary coach Richie Moran, before becoming a captain his senior year under former head coach Dave Pietramala. A four-year letter winner on defense for the Big Red, he was voted the team's outstanding senior athlete for his leadership and dedication on and off the field. Subsequent to earning his Bachelor of Science degree in nutritional sciences and biochemistry in 1998, DeLuca joined the Cornell coaching staff as an assistant coach under Pietramala and current head coach Tambroni for the 1999 and 2000 seasons.
During his first stint as an assistant coach, Cornell improved each year and DeLuca assisted in leading the Big Red to its first 10-win season in 13 years, including a hard-fought victory over upstate rival and eventual national champion Syracuse on Schoellkopf Field in 2000. That season, Cornell earned a berth to the NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse Championships; its first since his freshman campaign in 1995.
DeLuca spent two years working in Manhattan, N.Y., as a marketing manager with the SFX Sports Group, an international talent management and marketing agency, and more recently serving as the vice president of operations for the National Lacrosse League -- the youngest vice president in the league's history.
A native of Rochester, N.Y., DeLuca was a talented athlete recruited to play both football and lacrosse coming out of high school before choosing to play lacrosse at Cornell. A standout three-sport student-athlete during his high school career, he excelled first at McQuaid Jesuit High School in Rochester, N.Y., and later graduated from Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Mass.
DeLuca resides in Ithaca with his wife, Laurie, an assistant coach for the Cornell women's lacrosse team.
