Dancing to the national title
What makes a championship team? Extraordinary individual talent, certainly, but the talent has to be fused by the remarkable group chemistry that began to emerge at that March meeting. Academic accountability was crucial; while their classmates were busy studying and taking final exams, the women's lacrosse team was busy winning a regional semifinal, a national quarterfinal, then competing in the national final four — and studying and taking final exams. Spirit, leadership, teamwork, the will to win, commitment, endurance, dancing, love and laughter — dancing?
Dancing. Two months after the stunning last-gasp defeat at the hands of Franklin & Marshall, an older, wiser and better Hamilton team had the rematch it wanted. And the chance at payback just happened to come in the national final. It was pouring rain and miserably cold that Sunday at Donald J. Kerr Stadium in Salem, Va., and both teams were standing around waiting on what is an unaccustomed delay for a Division III lacrosse team: synchronized timing for a live television broadcast. Briscoe looked across the field at the F&M bench. "It looked like they were walking the Green Mile," she said. "They were so stiff and nervous."
And Hamilton's bench? "We were out in the rain, dancing and jumping up and down and so excited," says Tara Eckberg '08. "We had a dance party," Briscoe adds. "That's how our team is."
Balancing academic, athletic priorities
The Continentals had reason to dance. The day before, in the national semifinal, they marched to a 10-5 lead against top-ranked, unbeaten Salisbury University, then hung on as the Sea Gulls inched back. Seven Hamilton players scored in the 11-10 nail-biter; it was the team's fourth straight win against a Top 10 team.
But the Continentals also had reason to nod off. The playoff trip happened to consume two-thirds of Hamilton's final exam week, and many players felt the pinch in trying to balance a team focus, competitive excitement, academic commitments and, oh yes, sleep. One student took a five-hour exam for Professor of Biology Jinnie Garrett's Genes and Genomes course during the trip. Another wrote 20 pages for various assigned papers. Nicole Tetreault '08 set the academic bar high for her teammates; between practice and a team dinner on the evening before the Salisbury win, Tetreault — a Phi Beta Kappa, two-time All-American and 2008 Academic All-American player who graduated magna cum laude the following Sunday — took a three-hour proctored chemistry exam. For most players, Director of Athletics Jon Hind '80 says, "the academic work never really stopped."
Coach Kloidt found the demands of the week to be different only in degree from those of the regular season. "They always have to manage their time," she says, "and I think that they manage their time better when they are in season, to be quite honest." Study and academic commitment were also a discipline in which older teammates were seen as role models and led by example. McGowan, the senior, "was always up working on the second floor of Commons, so I would join her, just to hang out and study," Bray says. "A lot of times I was tired, but I thought, why not get some work done? Her being there was motivation for me."
