Girls Lacrosse Camp at Gould Academy

Coach David Keenan was the first full-time women’s lacrosse coach in Saint Joseph’s history. He focuses on recruiting players who fit within the culture he has championed since his earliest days as a coach.

Coach Keenan has found success curating a team of strong and serious students who happen to be passionate about playing lacrosse. Most importantly, they buy into the team’s expectations and values, and are willing to provide support and encouragement to their teammates. The result of this proven formula is a team that loves to both play and spend time together, helping cement bonds that pay dividends on and off the field.

In addition to his regular full-time coaching duties at Saint Joseph’s, Keenan is heavily involved in his home and college communities, as he volunteers his time coaching at clinics and programs run by USA Lacrosse, universities, and club programs and serves as a coach at Wicked Lacrosse.

Most recently, Coach Keenan brought the Saint Joseph’s women’s lacrosse program to new heights in his first full season at the helm after overseeing the team during pandemic-shortened campaigns in 2020 and 2021.

Under Keenan's watch in 2022, the Monks posted a 20-1 record with a perfect 13-0 mark in Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) play. As the top seed in the GNAC Tournament, St. Joe's toppled Elms College, 20-4, in quarterfinal play and advanced to the conference championship game with a 12-7 triumph over Emmanuel College in semifinal action.

Hosting second-seeded – and four-time defending GNAC champion - Johnson & Wales University in the title bout, Saint Joseph's trailed for the better part of the contest but clinched the crown with three unanswered goals in the fourth quarter, winning 10-9.

Making their second NCAA Tournament appearance and first since 2015, the Monks faced #23 SUNY-Geneseo in the opening round and suffered a 19-2 defeat at the hands of the Knights.

The 2022 Monks established numerous team records, including wins (20), points (510), shots (744), shots on goal (571), free-position goals (60), draw controls (330), and man-up goals (26), and several players broke longstanding individual season marks and garnered postseason accolades for their efforts under Coach Keenan's leadership.

The 2021 campaign was off to a similar start as Saint Joseph’s held a 6-2 record – including a 2-1 mark in GNAC play – when the pandemic forced the college to send students home in late April. The Monks’ two losses came at the hands of quality opponents – NESCAC foe Bates College and reigning GNAC Champion Johnson & Wales (12-11 in OT) – as the team looked poised to make a lengthy playoff run. Six players collected All-Conference honors.

In Coach Keenan's first year as the Monks’ clipboard carrier (2020), he led the Royal Blue to a 4-1 record with wins over Husson, Maine Maritime, Southern Maine, and UMaine-Farmington before the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Coach Keenan, joined the women's lacrosse program as an assistant coach in the fall of 2018, and prior to that had an impressive background - both playing and coaching - in the sport of lacrosse.

Keenan was instrumental in bringing girls’ lacrosse to the Lakes Region, where he began with a small youth team, eventually building and running a full, thriving lacrosse program that served local girls from 3rd through 12th grade. In 2018, just the fourth year of his Lake Region High School Girls’ Varsity program, his team won their first State Championship.

In Coach Keenan's playing career he was an All-American goalie at Bethpage High School in Long Island, NY and went on to earn a scholarship to play DI Lacrosse at North Carolina State University. After graduating with a degree in Agricultural Economics, he was drawn to Naples, Maine, where he started a successful small business and lives with his wife and two daughters.