On a team with no shortage of All-Americans and star power, fans of Virginia's women's lacrosse team now have another name they need to know.
Freshman Blair Weymouth made an impressive home debut for the Cavaliers against the Temple Owls on Sunday. Weymouth led the Cavaliers with six points as Virginia held on to defeat Temple 10-8 at frigid Klöckner Stadium for the 10th straight time.
Virginia took a commanding six-goal lead after Weymouth's penalty shot in the 41st minute and seemed poised to take over the game. Temple rallied back, however, with four unanswered goals to narrow the gap, but was held scoreless for the final six minutes of the game to seal the victory for Virginia.
"Temple handled our pressure," coach Julie Myers said. "They took lots of time off the clock, and they really dominated the pace of the game in the second half."
Draw controls were an issue against Temple. After dominating draws against Vanderbilt Saturday, the Cavaliers lost the draw battle Sunday, 14-6. This resulted in many extra Temple possessions, which slowed down the formidable Virginia attack. Combined with some errant passes in transition, many potential Virginia possessions were lost.
"We took a lot of chances in the transition game, and then suddenly we didn't have the ball as often as we needed to have it," Myers aid. "We did not do a good job on draw controls or on ground balls, so we just missed opportunities to get more and more possessions."
As a result of the extra possessions, Temple slowed the game down with a very conservative, methodical offense.
The biggest positive for Virginia had to be Weymouth's outstanding scoring performance. Playing in only her second collegiate game, Weymouth torched the Temple defense for four goals and two assists.
"Blair is an exceptional athlete and a great player," Myers said. "We're awfully lucky she's on our team. She's going to get better with every game."
Temple got on the board first with an early penalty shot by Corey Leader. Virginia responded with three goals, all off Megan O'Malley assists, and senior Tyler Leachman added another goal to give Virginia a 5-1 lead.
Taking a 7-3 lead into halftime, Virginia took nine minutes to score in the second half before using a quick three-goal outburst to take their largest lead of the game at 10-4.
Senior captain Meredith Lazarus said that the team allowed Temple to get back in the game by playing tentatively and worrying about not losing the game.
"We come out ready to go, get up a few goals, and I think we need to just continue that intensity," Lazarus said. "We've got to keep up what we start off doing and just kind of continue throughout the game."
Myers believes this team will find itself in several close games this season, but these two early wins are a positive sign.
"It's good to win close games, for sure," Myers said. "This is going to be a season, especially early on, that we're going to have a lot of battles. A lot of teams are just going to bring their best game and see what they're going to get off of us. We need to make sure we're sharp and ready."
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