Haudenosaunee men set for 2025 Atlas Cup
- Austin Owens
- Sep 22
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 10
The Haudenosaunee Nationals are ramping up for a busy Sixes schedule to end the year, which kicks off at the end of September with the Atlas Cup in Sparks, Maryland. It will be followed closely by Super Sixes, which will be held in Oshawa, Ontario.
On the Men’s side, Roger Chrysler has been named the team’s Head Coach, while Landon Miller will serve as General Manager.
This will be the second consecutive year that Miller and Chrysler will head a team for the Haudenosaunee program. They held the same positions for the Men’s National Team at the 2024 World Lacrosse Box Championships.
Now that the staff has been finalized, the task becomes building out the roster – something that both have been working on throughout the summer.
Chrysler has spent the last few weeks traveling around to see the various National Championships, scouting players who could represent the Haudenosaunee on the world stage.
Unfortunately, the Haudenosaunee program has suffered several key losses in the past two weeks. Up-and-coming star Noah Snyder tragically passed away in a car accident while attending Marquette University. On Wednesday, longtime Haudenosaunee Nationals player and coach Mark “Redman” Burnam also passed after a battle with cancer.
Snyder had just recently competed with the Haudenosaunee U20 team at the World Championships in Jeju, South Korea and was selected to the Men's Sixes team competing in Sparks, MD for the Atlas Cup. Keeping him rostered was a priority for the staff and the program, highlighting his hard-work, dedication and the accomplishment in making his first Men's National Team roster.
Burnam was a member of the inaugural Haudenosaunee team in 1983, where he played alongside Chrysler. He also coached the Men’s National Team that captured Bronze in the World Lacrosse Field Championships in 2018.
“We were and are in shock, and we’re really just trying to be there for one another. It’s been really hard,” Chrysler said of Snyder’s passing. “A lot of these players have played alongside Noah with the (Six Nations) Arrows. So some of them are battling with grief right now. We just want to meet when we get down to Sparks and just let them know that we’re there for them and that we’re just ready to try and put as much success into the first game of the tournament.
“...Mark was a very close friend. I won a Presidents Cup in 1994 in Tuscarora. It’s just been a hard time this last little bit. But this is going to bring us closer and make us stronger as a group, and that’s what we’ll have to be to play at this level.”
With the World Championship roster a year ago, the team featured a lot of the names fans have come to know through their play in professional lacrosse. The likes of Lyle Thompson, Cody Jamieson, Randy Staats, and Zed Williams starred for the Haudenosaunee throughout the tournament. However, the future of the program was also on display, with the likes of Trey Deere and Koleton Marquis being added to the lineup.
The future of the Haudenosaunee program will once again be on display in these Sixes formats. While some veterans like Kyle Jackson, Ron John and Brooker Muir will feature for the program, there are also players like Jake Piseno, Stone Jacobs, Koleton Marquis, Trey Deere, Jack VanValkenburgh and others who are the next wave set to make their marks over the coming decades.
The roster was built with speed and endurance in mind, as the Sixes format is nonstop action that requires a team to play on the front foot at both ends to succeed.
“We definitely know how to score. But this game is just constant, constant, and you have to be efficient at both ends. You have to be more of a complete player. It’s a full-field game and you have to be able to run up and down and compete,” Chrysler said. “We’re taking a young group and going up against guys playing in the PLL and the NLL. So we’ve just got to focus on teaching. Not getting too high or low.
“...We’ve always kind of been top three with Canada and the US, but we dropped to five in Sixes. So we’re not quite as much looking like we’re at the top of the hill, but looking at who’s hungry and climbing that hill. So with this group, we’re just stressing that we’re digging in our heels. We’re going to take blows, but we’ll respond to those blows. So it’s going to be a lot of emotions.”
The Atlas Cup and Super Sixes are just a few events on the winding road to the Olympic Games in 2028. Chrysler has had the unique view of seeing the humble beginnings in 1983, to the team’s first medals in international competition, to now being on the cusp of the biggest stage the program and sport as a whole has ever been on.
With just a handful of events left until 2028, Chrysler can’t help but get excited for the opportunity to once again help the Haudenosaunee program develop as it heads towards making history in a few years.
“I’m just so honored. There are just no words to explain being on that very first team in 1983. We went down to Baltimore and played against Syracuse and Hobart, the Division I and III National Champions. We did kind of get our heads handed to us…but that was our first time being together and being the Iroquois Nationals and now being the Haudenosaunee Nationals. It’s an honour,” Chrysler said.
“At my age, to be at both ends of the spectrum…the beginning and now, seeing all of these Haudenosaunee star players who started in minor lacrosse and stuck with it all the way up and to see what it means to the Haudenosaunee people. There’s something that I don’t control, and it’s how long I’m here on this earth, but if I can live to see the day of the Haudenosaunee Nationals being in the Olympics, I will have lived a lifetime of dreams that any coach would want.”