Phil Dodson
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- Title:
- Head Coach
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- Phone:
- 847-735-6131
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- Email:
- pdodson@lakeforest.edu
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- Twitter:
- @CoachPDodson
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The 2024 season will be Phil Dodson's third as head coach of the Foresters, 13th as a coach at the collegiate level, and sixth at the helm of an NCAA program.
Under Dodson's direction, the Foresters posted the program's best overall record at 13-5 and won all five of their Midwest Lacrosse Conference games to capture the first league title in team history. A goal with just 3.3 seconds on the clock gave Lake Forest a dramatic 10-9 victory over the University of Dubuque in the MLC Tournament final and sent the Foresters to their first NCAA Division III Tournament.
Conor Murphy ranked fifth in the nation with 3.44 caused turnovers per game and was joined by teammates Trip Gaston, Jack Gillard, and Connor Tartaglione as First Team All-MLC players. Five other Foresters, including MLC Newcomer of the Year Brendan Herbert, were named to the second team and John Casey, who already shares the program record with 73 career goals in two seasons, was an honorable mention selection.
Murphy, Gaston, Herbert, and Casey were also among the 17 Foresters named to the 2023 MLC All-Academic Team and Lake Forest has had 19 such selections in Dodson's two years as head coach.
Dodson came to Lake Forest after four years as the first head men's lacrosse coach at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After a year of recruiting, he led the Cougars to a 7-8 record in their first season and a 9-7 mark in year two. The 2019 team also became Chatham's first spring sport to reach the semifinals of the conference tournament. Despite the 2020 season being cut short after just seven games by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chatham players earned a total of 15 all-conference honors during his two full seasons.
Dodson has also been a head coach at the club level since 2015.
No stranger to collegiate lacrosse in the Midwest, Dodson spent the 2013 season as the defensive coordinator at Carthage College (Kenosha, Wis.) before filling the same role at Aurora University (Aurora, Ill.) for the next three years. Those teams combined for an overall record of 62-19 and a Midwest Lacrosse Conference (MLC) mark of 31-1 with three league titles and NCAA Division III Tournament appearances.
A native of Wilmette, Illinois, Dodson had a stellar playing career at New Trier High School before becoming a four-year starter and two-year captain at the University of Illinois. The defender also earned Scholar-Athlete honors and a pair of All-American awards from the Men's Collegiate Lacrosse Association. He later served as the team's head coach for three years and made a pair of trips to the national tournament.
