Gulliver Prep’s Noyes, Palmetto’s Weinberg are Miami-Dade’s Lacrosse Players of the Year

Ryan Noyes capped a spectacular career by once again guiding Gulliver Prep into the Florida High School Athletic Association playoffs.

Emma Weinberg got hers started by leading Palmetto there for the first time.

Now, they’re the Miami Herald’s Miami-Dade County Lacrosse Players of the Year.

Noyes, a senior, scored 48 goals and had 35 assists to pace Gulliver as it won 6 of 8 games it played against Miami-Dade opponents. The attacking midfielder is a two-time first-team All-Dade County selection by the Herald.

For most of his childhood, Noyes was a baseball player, although he shifted over to lacrosse about seven years ago when Hoban Noyes, his younger brother and a freshman for the Raiders, started playing.

Now, he plans to play in college next year at Division II Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

“I remember when I started the competition wasn’t really the same as it is now,” the Herald’s Miami-Dade County Boys’ Lacrosse Player of the Year said. “It’s definitely a lot harder to compete against a lot of these local Miami teams.”

Weinberg, a sophomore, never played lacrosse before last season and hardly played as a freshman. Even as a sophomore, she joined the team late after putting together an all-county season as a soccer player for Palmetto.

Once Weinberg joined the team, the Panthers embarked on the best season in program history with Weinberg leading them as a two-way presence.

As a do-everything midfielder, Weinberg stuffed the stat sheet with 28 goals, 14 assists, 79 ground balls, 44 caused turnovers and 23 draw controls. She saved her biggest performance for the most important moment, too, as she scored seven goals to lead Palmetto to a one-goal win against Coral Reef in the District 16-2A semifinals.

“She’s a midfielder, so she’s all over the field,” Panthers coach Jenna Martino-DiFede said. “You can just see in certain games where we were maybe losing or it was a close game, especially, where she’d just have that fire in her eye.”

The win locked up Palmetto’s spot in the Region 4-2A quarterfinals.

The Panthers were the only Dade team to reach the FHSAA tournament this year.

“Trying something new really helped,” the Herald’s Miami-Dade County Girls’ Lacrosse Player of the Year said. “Moving from soccer to lacrosse, it brought me really far.”

This story was originally published June 8, 2022 at 8:40 AM.