After his team’s 18-4 dispatching of Mount St. Mary’s on Saturday evening, UVA men’s lacrosse coach Dom Starsia told reporters how important it was for his team to “stay together for a while more.”
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For last Saturday’s 18-4 defeat of Mount St. Mary’s, the UVA men’s lacrosse team donned shirts honoring slain fourth-year student-athlete Yeardley Love. Coach Dom Starsia remarked that his team’s performance came from “a culmination of outstanding leadership and a joy to be playing lacrosse again.” |
“There was no way to guarantee the result of today’s game, but I really just wanted us to win so we could have some more time,” said Starsia. “It would’ve been really hard if we’d had to disperse now.”
Such was the challenge facing both UVA lacrosse teams last weekend: avoid a loss on the field to recover from a loss off of it. Nearly two weeks after the death of fourth-year student and defender Yeardley Love and the subsequent arrest of her former boyfriend, fourth-year midfielder George Huguely, on a charge of first-degree murder, both teams won their way to the quarterfinals of the NCAA lacrosse tournament.
The atmospheres of the games, however, were as different as the final scores. While the Cavalier men routed the St. Mary’s squad, Klockner Stadium felt somber, from the team benches to the crowd to the press box.
The women’s team, however, won a close-fought, 14-12 match against Towson University on Sunday afternoon before a rowdy, supportive crowd of 2,270—including Starsia, members of the men’s lacrosse team, UVA President John Casteen and Love’s family.
Many members of Sunday’s crowd wore circular patches that bore a heart and, inscribed within, Yeardley Love’s name and number. Others wore t-shirts that read “One squad. One heart. One Love.” When Cavalier team energy seemed to wane, the crowd rattled the metal bleachers with their feet and cheered. And, both before and after the game, a certain Cher song played throughout Klockner, asking coaches, players and fans alike if they “believe in life after love.”
“I know I wasn’t ready to be done,” said UVA women’s coach Julie Myers after the game. The team, she said, was skilled enough to “still be alive” in the tournament, but Myers also conceded that her players had a lot to go through, emotionally speaking.
As does each lacrosse team in the NCAA.
In an interview last week, Syracuse men’s lacrosse coach John Desko told C-VILLE that an event like Love’s death is a “reminder to the group of how our actions can hurt someone else—the team or the university, the community.” Along with her players, Missy Doherty, head coach of the Towson women’s team, wore an orange armband with the initials “Y.L.” during and after Sunday’s game. She said that she’d prepared her players for what she knew would be an “emotional” game.
However, the match was also “one of the first chances to really celebrate Yeardley’s life,” she told the media. Towson player Jacie Kendall said that, “in respect to the Virginia team, it was our job to play as hard as we could against them.”
Prior to last weekend’s games, the greatest competition facing UVA lacrosse might have been the harsh scrutiny of Starsia, following reports of a February 2009 assault by Huguely on an unnamed teammate. Last Thursday, UVA released a statement regarding Starsia’s handling of the fight; UVA spokeswoman Carol Wood wrote that “at no time did either player disclose to Coach Starsia the underlying facts or gravity of what had actually occurred between them.”
The statement echoed recent comments by Casteen, who said that UVA students were required to “self-report” arrests or convictions—in a sense, to be conscious of the gravity of their actions. “Coach Starsia asked the players if they wanted to discuss the incident further, but both declined, repeating that they were O.K. and had worked things out,” said Wood.
With at least one more round of games—not to mention this weekend’s graduation exercises—there should be ample time for both lacrosse squads to further consider the gravity of the past few weeks, and deal with it as best they can.
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