It has been a long season for the Virginia women's lacrosse team, starting its season in late February and finally coming to an apex in early May. From the beginning of the campaign, the players and coaches have been set on one goal: reaching the NCAA tournament championship game. The No. 3 Cavaliers (12-4) have two more challenges ahead of them before the start of the national competition. The first test will be No. 16 Vanderbilt (5-6) at home on April 27. The second challenge, two days later, will be much more difficult as Virginia will travel to Baltimore to take on top--ranked Loyola (13-0) on April 29. Both games will be equally important and equally tough.
"You never underestimate your opponents," senior Virginia defender Tiffany Schummer said. "Not at this level."
Virginia will have plenty of time to rest and recover from this weekend's ACC tournament, where it was unable to overcome No. 2 Maryland for the league title. The Cavaliers reached the final after claiming a 12-9 victory over Duke in the second semifinal game on Friday. The semifinal win marked sweet revenge for Virginia as they lost to the Blue Devils earlier in the season in Charlottesville. Virginia coach Julie Myers said she wants to push the Cavaliers in a positive direction and build their confidence before the next two games.
"We rebuild and get ready for our game against Vanderbilt on Sunday," Myers said. "It's not so much about rebuilding, actually, it's more just tweaking things and making our attackers go hard to the goal again."
Virginia hopes that facing ranked opponents before the NCCA tournament will better prepare Virginia to face other top competition from around the country in the first few weeks of May, even though the Cavaliers are ranked No. 3 nationally.
Rankings, however, have never phased Virginia as they consistently have played a dominant style of lacrosse both offensively and defensively.
Myers already has her mind made up on what needs to be worked on in practice over the weeklong break.
"It's going to be lots of shooting and lots of transition games that we're going to play in the next week," she said.
So far this season, Virginia is 5-4 against ranked opponents, with two of those losses coming against No. 2 Maryland.
The Cavaliers look for the old saying, "history repeats itself" to hold true as they finished the regular season against Vanderbilt and Loyola last year, winning both those match-ups.
Finishing the year strong is a goal of any athletic squad, but even if Virginia stumbles, the NCAA tournament is a whole new start of a whole new chapter where any team can rise out of the depths of the women's lacrosse world to capture the championship.
The third--ranked Cavaliers are in a good position to be the first to knock off Loyola from its top position and end its undefeated season, but will have to be firing on all cylinders to do so, just as they were against Duke on Friday. Only time will tell how Virginia's season will end and it is squarely in the hand of the Cavaliers.
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