Everyone on Syracuse knew about Kayla Treanor before she knew about them.

Gary Gait, the head coach, bragged about her before she graduated high school. He talked about her stick skills. He talked about how she could fit into SU’s offense. He talked about how great of a player she could be.

But before she had to play a significant role for the Orange as an attack, it was just talk.

“She came in and had that swagger like, ‘I’m a freshman, but I’m going to play with these people in D-I lacrosse,’” former SU attack Michelle Tumolo said. “… You’d never know if she was a freshman or a senior.

“She just plays her heart out.”

When Tumolo tore her ACL in April 2013, Treanor, a freshman at the time, filled in at the left attack position and was forced to use her left hand as effectively as her naturally dominant right hand. All Treanor had were expectations then, but nothing tangible.

But this year, there’s a reputation for her to uphold. There is no Tumolo, and there is no Alyssa Murray. Treanor is the centerpiece of the No. 4 SU offense and if Syracuse were to win its first national title in a women’s sport, it would likely be because of her. Treanor’s 117 points last season led the country and her 79 goals ranked second nationwide.

Treanor developed her stick skills, the strongest point of her game, by receiving feedback from Gait. Treanor says Gait, a former SU lacrosse player, has the best stick skills of any player she’s ever seen. In previous seasons, Treanor could also learn from dynamic attacks like Tumolo and Murray on an everyday basis and model her own game after them.

“Now it’s her opportunity to lead the offense,” Gait said, “and I think the experience she’s gained by playing on attack is valuable and you’re going to see the results of it this year.”

The day before Syracuse’s final four game against Maryland in 2013, Gait mentioned a move to Treanor during a walk-through that he thought she could be successful with. The next day, Treanor scored twice with that exact move, coming from behind the goal, running toward one side of the net, reversing direction behind the crease, attacking the opposite side and scoring with a clinical dip-and-dunk over the goalie.

“I use (that move) all the time now,” Treanor said.

Because Treanor’s ambidextrous, defenders don’t know which hand to defend. When she charges toward one side, they don’t know if she’ll continue that way or reverse into the opposite direction.

On the rare occasion that defenders do slow Treanor down, she’ll throw a behind-the-back pass — something Gait made a career out of — or maybe even fake the fancy play and keep running. In high school, she would throw passes to teammates who weren’t even ready to catch. Treanor has even made a habit of scoring while standing behind goal line extended and curving the ball in.

“She’s so dominant because you literally don’t know what’s going to come next,” Tumolo said. “… It’s really almost impossible to shut her down.”

Before she got to college, Treanor played midfield. And though it’s common for college coaches to recruit high school midfielders and move them around the field, Treanor spent more time focusing on the endurance needed to play on both sides of the field.

At Syracuse, she’s dedicated all of her time to the attack position, which is centered more on controlling the offense with the ball in her stick and taking on defenders one-on-one.

While Treanor also has an uncanny ability to pass, too — her 38 assists last season tied her for 14th best in the country — it’s her killer instinct to take over games that separates her.

The summer before her sophomore year of high school, the goalie on Albany Elite, her travel team, couldn’t play in the second half of a game during a tournament and there was no backup. With no one in goal, Treanor won the first eight draw controls after halftime and each time, Albany Elite scored in the eventual blowout win.

“It was just like bing, bing, bing, bing,” said Peter Melito, Treanor’s travel coach and varsity coach at Niskayuna (New York) High School. “… That to me was just like wow. It was unheard of.”

And though Melito says Treanor put on performances like this game after game, she was never satisfied. Treanor played soccer and basketball for most of her life and only picked up lacrosse in seventh grade, so she felt she had to make up for the missed time by working even harder.

After practices in high school, she would go home and play wall ball against the bounce-back net in her front yard. During this past Winter Break, Treanor would work out up to three times a day.

“You never want to stay the same, you never want to plateau,” Treanor said. “So I have so much to work on.”

In the fall of her junior year of high school, Treanor tore the ligaments in her left ankle and felt the pain for the rest of the school year.

But it didn’t stop her. She played through her soccer, basketball and lacrosse seasons with the injury.

“I just love sports so much, you don’t even think about it,” Treanor said.

She grew up idolizing athletes like Bo Jackson — a former professional football and baseball player — whose documentary she watched as a child.

But now the roles have shifted. She’s the idol. She’s a frontrunner for this year’s Tewaaraton Award, which is given to college lacrosse’s best player.

She’s a product of centerpiece players that have come before her. But Treanor is looking to do something that no one else has done before: lead Syracuse to a national championship.

Said Treanor: “The hope is the better I am, the better our team will be.”