The video for last year’s Boston College women’s lacrosse team was called “Bookend” — an appropriate title for a senior class that won the NCAA championship as freshmen and again in their final year.
This year’s team is hoping it doesn’t have to wait as long for a repeat.
The defending national champions open their season Friday against No. 8 Loyola of Maryland, and the Eagles’ goal for the season is no less than back-to-back titles — something no BC team in any sport has ever done.
“You might say, ‘Yeah, they’ve won before. … Your career, you’re good.’ But I think for us, why not do what’s never been done before, make history, go back to back,” senior attacker Mallory Hasselbeck said last week at the team’s media day. “Once you get a taste of it, you just want to keep getting better.”
While Boston College has occasionally managed to hang around the periphery of big-time sports like football and basketball, it’s biggest successes have come in a men’s hockey program that has won five NCAA titles (and is currently the top-ranked team in the country). Those were the Eagles’ only national championships until the women’s lacrosse team broke through after three straight losses in the title game to win it all in 2021.
With a second NCAA championship last year, the Eagles have cemented themselves as one of the top programs in the country. The proof was on display at the ring ceremony this winter, when the school’s NCAA trophies were lined up on a table along with the Tewaaraton Awards that go to the top player in the country.
“Going to the ring ceremony and seeing the trophies laid out … the standard here is to win at BC,” attacker Emma LoPinto said. “Getting the opportunity to be a part of such a special occasion, but also still be on the team and to chase another national championship is something that I don’t take for granted.”
The Eagles return 18 letterwinners from the championship team, including two of their top three goal scorers, Rachel Clark (78 goals, 23 assists) and LoPinto (58, 28), and No. 1 goalie Shea Dolce. There are eleven additions, including three transfers.
“I think the hunger is there, maybe even more so than other years because now they’re in the spotlight and it’s their team,” coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein said. “They don’t have the crutch of this very senior-led team that they’ve had for the last few years. For the seniors, ‘Now it’s on you. Now this is your team. What are you going to do with it?’ And I think they love that.”
Hasselbeck’s sister, Annabelle, played on the two NCAA championship lacrosse teams. (Her mother, Sarah, also played lacrosse at BC and her father, Matt, was the Eagles quarterback before a 17-year career in the NFL.) Mallory Hasselbeck remembers attending the 2021 title game as a spectator and realizing that the standards had been raised.
“We come in as freshmen and it’s the expectation that you go to the Final Four, you go to the national championship,” said Hasselbeck, who missed last season with an injury. “That same drive still hasn’t left this program, hasn’t left the locker room, hasn’t left Acacia. … I don’t think that same drive and competitive nature has left just because it’s become so common.”
In more than 40 years since the first NCAA women’s lacrosse championship in 1982, only 14 schools have won it all; BC is one of just six programs to claim more than two titles, with Maryland grabbing 14 and Northwestern eight. The Eagles’ consistency in making the championship game seven years in a row (there was no 2020 game because of the pandemic) places the school among the elite, but the players still feel like they have a lot to prove.
Sophomore defender Lydia Colasante said she got a lesson last year from senior Belle Smith that keeps her motivated.
“She said, ‘No matter how many national championships this program wins we’ll always be the underdogs,’” Colasante said. “And so I think that we always attack every opponent like we are the underdogs and we take our preparation very seriously.”
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