'We learned what we were made of'
A win away from the College's first national team title in history and with a chance to avenge the season's only loss, Hamilton's women needed no further motivation. On this rain-drenched Sunday there would be no letup, no loss of focus, no last-second heartbreak. "Being the underdog," Briscoe says, "we learned what we were made of."

After an early exchange of goals with F&M in the championship game, with the score 2-2, the Continentals took control with six straight goals and won 13-6. Bray scored five goals on the way to the tournament's Outstanding Player Award. Another first-year player, Anne Graveley '11, added three goals; Briscoe had two goals and two assists. Seniors Nicole Tetreault and Jen McGowan ended their great careers with goals and joined Bray, Graveley and Kate Marek '09 on the All-Tournament team. Goalie Kate Fowler '10 recorded six saves, two ground balls and an intercepted pass in frustrating F&M's high-powered offense. "Seniors led me and told me what I needed to do," Fowler says, "but I was able to give them a different perspective from the goal."

A few hours later, the bus ride home through Clinton and back up the Hill was a wild one – but then, this team's bus rides usually are. Whether the players are sampling Usher's "Love in this Club" or Coach Kloidt's rendition of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," the song remains the same: "No Drama," as a team slogan phrases it. "Their strength is their sense of humor," Kloidt says. "They are a really funny group of kids. And that's how we've always handled pressure. They like to sing, they like to dance, they like to make fun of each other. They like to make fun of me. I like to make fun of them."

"Our team chemistry is what carried us through the season," Fowler says. "We were able to play hard and challenge each other at practice and then be really great friends afterward."

But there was something a little different about this last ride up the Hill after all. It was the people — not only the scores waiting at the Athletic Center, but those lining the streets of Clinton. "It was like a tidal wave to the front of the bus when they saw the police cars and the fire trucks," recalls Hind, who was traveling with the team – "like kids at Christmas."

"I don't even think I knew there were that many people in Clinton," Bray says. "They had their kids, they were holding up posters, everyone was applauding, screaming, jumping up and down."

Two months and countless hours of working, dreaming and learning after that soul-searching team meeting, the national champions came home to a hero's welcome. "My heart is so full of pride and admiration and gratitude to the team, to the coaches, to all of you, that words fail me," President Joan Hinde Stewart told them.

Hind, the director of athletics, knows a couple of things about both lacrosse and success. He built a winning Division I program from scratch at Butler University in Indianapolis during the 1990s and was named National Coach of the Year in 1998. But he is also "grounded in Division III philosophies" of academic and athletic balance, he noted on his return to Hamilton last summer. The Continentals' national crown is an abiding example of what can happen when that balance is struck – when chemistry, commitment and accountability converge.

"When somebody accomplishes something of this magnitude," Hind says, "everyone who's a part of this community wins."