Yesterday afternoon, women’s lacrosse was played in anger for the first time in the regular season. Fifty-six teams in Division I, II, and III took up sticks, and there will be a few hundred contests between now and Memorial Day Weekend to figure out who the best collegiate teams will be.
If there were a couple of games that caught my eye, it was these two. One featured a pair of Top 20 teams and former NCAA champions, James Madison and North Carolina. UNC was a team which had seemingly been cursed because of an avalanche of injuries starting in 2023 fall-ball. But a team which has gotten back its players from the injury list, as well as reuniting the Humphrey sisters — Chloe, Ashley, and Nicole — and a passel of top recruits, showed out yesterday evening in a 14-2 win which should be a sizable signal that the Heels are back.
Ashley and Chloe Humphrey led the attack with three goals each, but the thing about this attack is that the first six goals scored yesterday were by different people. You’ve seen balanced and talented attacks like that before; the first few years of the Northwestern women’s dynasty of the mid-2000s had balanced scoring — you could perhaps try to shut off future Hall-of-Famer Kristen Kjellman, but anyone else in that attack seven was trusted with the ball at any time.
The other game score that was of note was Louisville, a team which won its first ACC Tournament game last year, beat a Denver side which was only two years removed from a Final Four berth by a score of 10-8. Like UNC, Louisville had a balanced attack in its win over the Pioneers. Lauren Figas had three goals, while Rian Adkins and Negai Nakazawa had two each for the Cardinals.
Louisville, for me, has been a “team of the future” for some time. While the team found success in the 2010s, the team made a course change in 2017. It was then when head coach Kellie Young was let go after eight players transferred during the offseason — this, in an era before the transfer portal.
Scott Teeter was brought in to right the ship, but the Cards have not completed a winning season since he was brought in; the only over-.500 record was the truncated 2020 COVID-19 season, which saw Louisville finish with a 5-4 record.
I get the feeling that Louisville will build on the Denver win and could be a dark horse in the powerful ACC.