I simply had to write something about the BC's women's lacrosse team (and not just because my wife, her two sisters, her dad and one of my brothers-in-law all went there) after they did something this afternoon that had never happened before in program history: the Eagles rolled 16-10 over Syracuse in the 2021 NCAA national championship game at Towson University to win their first-ever title. What made it even sweeter is that BC was appearing in the title game for the fourth straight season after heartbreaking losses in 2017 to Maryland (16-13 at Gillette Stadium), in 2018 to James Madison (16-15) and in 2019 to Maryland again (12-10). Head coach and former Terps star Acacia Walker-Weinstein has quietly built a juggernaut of a program in Chestnut Hill in her nine seasons there and this solidifies her place as one of the best women's college coaches in the country these days. BC had a slim 9-8 halftime lead and their defense clamped down on Syracuse in the second half to deliver an exhilarating moment and lifetime memories for themselves and their school.
This was also BC's first NCAA title from a team other than the powerhouse men's hockey program which has won five. The Eagles finished the season 18-3 and in the process split four games (the first time in women's lacrosse that two teams had played four times in the same campaign) with their ACC rival the Orange. They each won once in the regular season at home, BC lost at Cuse in the ACC tournament semifinals but they got they ultimate revenge today behind senior attack Charlotte North (she scored a game-high 6 goals which gave her an NCAA record 102 this season) who was named the tournament's most outstanding player and junior goalie Rachel Hall (she made 9 saves) who was named to the all-tournament team along with three other teammates (attack Jenn Medjid, midfielder Belle Smith and defender Hollie Schleicher). As a college recruiting nerd what's interesting to me about North and Hall-besides the fact that they are two of the best women's college lacrosse players that I've ever seen at their respective positions-is that they are both transfers: normally you associate transfers with football, basketball and hockey but North began her collegiate career at Duke and Hall originally was at Oregon. Oh and they're also both from Texas which is very cool considering that lacrosse had always been viewed as a mostly regional (Northeast and Mid-Atlantic) sport before recent years have proven otherwise in both the men's and women's game.
Can we also recognize how hard it is to win a Division 1 NCAA championship for New England schools in sports other than hockey? BC joins a short list of champions in women's lacrosse that hail from New England: UMass won the inaugural NCAA women's lacrosse tournament in 1982, UNH followed in 1985 and Harvard was the most recent local champion in 1990. The Crimson also lost in overtime in 1992 to Maryland and Dartmouth fell in 2006 to Northwestern at BU's Nickerson Field. FYI Maryland with 14 titles and the Wildcats with seven titles are by far the most storied programs in NCAA women's lacrosse. It's hard to overstate how much an NCAA title can do for a program; BC is obviously a wonderful school academically to begin with so that aspect sells itself but now the fact that they can compete with the best women's lacrosse teams year after year means that Walker-Weinstein's recruiting classes (which are already extremely legit) will get even that much better. New England doesn't normally produce the same sheer number of D1 athletes that other areas do for many reasons (namely our spotty weather which limits outdoor training and the level of competition) but you can bet that BC will be at the top of the wish lists now for all the most decorated high school girls lacrosse stars in the area not to mention around the United States. Finally, this title also gives Acacia almost unlimited job security meaning that she can coach at BC basically as long as she wants to, kind of like legendary BC men's hockey head coach Jerry York who has won four crowns with the Eagles and is the all-time winningest coach in college hockey.
No comments:
Post a Comment