GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- To truly appreciate what
Florida's lacrosse team accomplished on the first Senior Day in the
program's short history, you need to understand how thoroughly dominant
Northwestern has been over the years.
So bear with me for a brief history lesson.
The
Wildcats began playing NCAA women's lacrosse in 1982 before shifting
the program to club status after the '92 season. There it remained for
the next nine years.
In 2002, NU returned to varsity
classification under Coach Kelly Amonte-Hiller. In 2005, the Wildcats
became the first school outside the eastern time zone to capture the
NCAA championship and last May won their seventh national title over
eight years.
Got that?
Now get this.
Florida 22, Northwestern 4.
"There's
not many words to express how that game went," said senior attacker
Kitty Cullen, clearly drained by the emotions of the day, not to mention
zipping through the Wildcats defense for a trio of goals and two
assists. "That's probably the best our team has ever played."
And
that's how the Gators and 13 seniors celebrated the final home match of
their remarkable something-from-nothing careers. Talk about an
orange-and-blue explanation point for this class. All Coach Amanda
O'Leary's bunch did was hand one of the dominant forces of women's
college sports -- any sport, mind you -- the worse defeat since the
program rebooted to Division I a dozen years ago.
"We didn't expect that," defender Sam Farrell. "I guess everything just came together."
You could say that, yes.
The
Gators won the opening draw and scored 30 seconds into the game. They
won the second draw and scored 31 seconds later. Then 26 seconds after
that.
Barely 10 minutes into the game, Florida led 5-0 on the way
to a 13-2 edge at halftime, an output that matched the most goals
Northwestern had given up to any opponent this season -- or in the past
three seasons.
By the time the game ended, the Gators, whose
first lacrosse game came on Feb. 20, 2010, had tallied the most goals
ever against NU (topping a 21-2 loss to Virginia on March 26, 1991) and
held the Wildcats to their fewest goals in 210 matches (dating to a 14-3
loss to Syracuse to end the 2003 season).
Oh yes, Florida had also clinched a share of the American Lacrosse Conference regular-season crown for the third straight year.
Take a bow, ladies, especially you seniors.
Who could have pictured something so good happening so fast?
"They
could have gone to Maryland or Northwestern or Duke or Carolina, but
they came to Florida," O'Leary said after watching her senior class
account for 15 of 22 goals and seven of 11 assists "We often talk about
them as trailblazers. They took a chance. No field. No coaches. No
lacrosse tradition. They bought into a dream."
Now, they've lived it and passed it on to the players that followed.
"They
started the program ... with no upperclass girls to teach them what
they taught us," sophomore midfielder Shannon Gilroy said of her senior
sisters after ripping the Wildcats for five goals and a pair of assists.
"They really dug deep and played really hard."
In doing, they went out in style and with four seasons worth of momentum.
"We'll savor this, but it's on to the next one," O'Leary said afterward. "Hopefully, we'll see Northwestern again."
Amonte-Hiller may not want to see Florida after falling in the series for the third straight time.
This
one, though, was much different than the 8-7 loss at Evanston in the
2012 regular season or the 14-7 defeat in the ALC Tournament title game
last year.
As the Wildcats filed out of the UF lacrosse complex,
Amonte-Hiller stopped for a (very) brief chat with reporters. She was
asked if her players were shocked by the outcome.
"I don't know," she said. "I haven't talked to them."
One
blowout victory does not a season make. In fact, it surely will fuel
the Wildcats if they face the Gators again in the ALC Tournament at
Baltimore in two weeks or the NCAA Tournament after that.
But the Gators have a resounding reference point to just how good (or great) they can be.
Not that they didn't know before.
"We're
a pretty confident team, but this definitely will give us more
confidence going against some of the big teams," senior midfielder
Brittany Dashiell said. "We'll watch this game over and over to see what
we were doing right, but every game is different. We may have won this
one by 18, but it's not going to happen that way again. Every game is
different, so we just have to stay focused and keep moving on."
Sort of like they've done since arriving on campus four years ago and turning a vision into reality.
