Southern Uprising
MOCS SHOCK ADELPHI TO WIN D-II TITLE
The absurdity of the situation was not lost on Shannon Gilfedder, as the Florida Southern sophomore lined up across from Division II’s version of the Death Star beside a group sometimes mistaken for a soccer team at their local airport. The public address announcer at Metro State University in Denver presented the Mocs’ opponent, Adelphi, winner of 40 straight games and consecutive NCAA titles, as a “seven-time national champion.” “That’s older than our team is,” Gilfedder recalled thinking. But the fifth-year team from Lakeland, Fla., that lost three all-time greats to graduation, then lost three of its first eight games, including one to a pretty good Division III team, came from behind to defeat Adelphi 8-7 and became the first team south of the Mason-Dixon Line to win a Division II women’s lacrosse title. “Everyone wanted us to win, but no one expected us to win,” Gilfedder said. “You have everything to prove, but nothing to lose.” The Mocs actually kind of thought they might win ever since their first year in 2012, when they went 12-4 and started creeping up the national rankings two weeks into existence. There was, however, a point that senior Ashley Robertson could not imagine winning a title with Florida Southern: her junior year of high school when she went to St. Mary’s (Md.) to visit coach Kara Reber, who had contacted her about the Division III program.
“I went down and they said, ‘Oh
she’s gone,’” Robertson said. “I didn’t know where she went.” Reber had taken the job at Florida Southern. The coach wanted to build something from the ground up. 2015 was supposed to be the Mocs’ year, but they lost to Lindenwood in the semifinals. Florida Southern’s lack of star power and fearlessness on the biggest stage led to some creative plays that no other team would dare to try. “Just because you aren’t a perfect team doesn’t mean you can’t win a game like that,” Gilfedder said. “We stared down a perfect team. A lot of the things about our team that were imperfect worked perfectly together. An imperfect team can beat a perfect team.”
—M.M. 26 LACROSSE MAGAZINE » July/AUGUST 2016
Amanda Johansen
Something for everyone WSomething Old The players on the UMass
women’s lacrosse team see the program’s lone national championship trophy any time they walk through the entranceway to their new field. For them, it serves as a motivational reminder of the greatest era in Minutewomen lacrosse history and a level of success the team hasn’t experienced for three decades. UMass, which won the first NCAA championship in 1982 and advanced to semifinals the next two years, returned to the quarterfinals for the first time since its heyday with upsets of Princeton and Cornell. “We’ve talked about how that was an era of greatness for the program, and that was something we wanted to work to replicate as much as possible,” said senior Eileen McDonald, who was born 10 years after UMass made its last quarterfinal appearance. “We’ve been wanting to get back to performing on the big stage.” UMass wasn’t the only vintage lacrosse power to make strides. Unseeded Penn State upset second-seeded Florida and seventh-seeded Penn to get back to the final four for the first time since 1999.
“Everyone keeps reminding me we haven’t been here for a while,” coach Missy Doherty said upon arriving in Chester. “We’re here for a reason. We’re here because we’re ready. We’re not here because we somehow lucked into it.” The Nittany Lions pushed eventual champion North Carolina to the brink in a 12- 11 semifinal loss.
— Laurel Pfahler and Megan Schneider
Anne Farnham A Publication of US Lacrosse W Something New
No one overlooked USC this time around — Michaela Michael was on the cover of January’s Lacrosse Magazine — but it did not keep the Trojans from taking a perfect record (22-0) into the NCAA quarterfinals.
After hosting the first-ever NCAA tournament games on the West Coast at L.A. Coliseum and defeating Stanford, USC and Syracuse staged a game for the ages at the Carrier Dome. Orange goalie Allie Murray came up with a huge save at the end of regulation and midfielder Kelly Cross ended the Trojans’ dream season when she scored in overtime to lift Syracuse to a 12-11 win.
W Nothing Blue Neither North Carolina team
had a Tewaaraton candidate still kicking come June 2. It marked the first time a national champion did not boast one of the five finalists. “You just have to scratch your head,” Tar Heels coach Jenny Levy said. “A lot of awards are stat-driven. You have to look at more than just stats.”
Brown’s Dylan Molloy and Maryland’s Taylor Cummings later were named the 2016 Tewaaraton recipients. Cummings became the first three-time honoree.
— Justin Feil
©GREG WALL (AJ); ©JOHN STROHSACKER (AF)
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