The Made-For-Hollywood Lacrosse Hero

Sports are the simplest, most efficient way to write a perfect Hollywood story. Their organic drama is easily repeatable, and the Roman-style, good-vs.-evil battle is easily adapted to a theater. Each side has an adversary or enemy each time it steps into battle, but each team adds depth to the stories through the people and their backgrounds. Melding and weaving that together forms the backbone of a formula that's always compelling and never disappoints in triggering an emotional response.

On Friday, Boston College lacrosse defeated Syracuse, 15-13, in its Red Bandanna Game. The annual staple honored Welles Crowther, the alumnus who saved more than a dozen people at the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, while highlighting the women's program against the team it defeated for the national championship last season.

A big reason for BC's win stemmed from its late fourth quarter effort after a Syracuse rally cut a five goal lead down to one with under 10 minutes left to play. For the rest of the period, the Eagles added two goals but clamped on the Orange to prevent any further comeback. In an emotional game, controlling the possession required every phase to work in sync, especially against an opponent led by a former assistant coach who returned home to her legendary alma mater.

Syracuse's head coach Kayla Treanor very clearly knew how to attack BC's defense, but on that back end, Melanie Welch's assignment neutralized whichever target slashed to the crease or rolled around the back end of the cage. That isolation erased a primary target and forced a very good attack to rely more on one-on-one attacks, which worked during the four-goal run but couldn't pressure further towards the end of the game.

"What I love about crease defense is the freedom that we have with it," Welch said. "We're allowed to play how we want. I'm allowed to pressure behind [the cage], which not a lot of defenders do. People usually want to stay in front of the crease, but for some reason, I kind of like going back there, and I love being able to take away the way teams feed [scorers]. I'm also lucky that if I get beat, someone will be right behind me to stop [an attack]."

Drawing that assignment is a weekly exercise for Welch, the gritty folk hero who embodies the Hollywood story as much as anyone on the turf. Her challenges have been countless, and she's moved from former walk-on to defensive stalwart through a journey that's custom-fit for the big screen as much as it has a home in the defensive formations of Acacia Walker-Weinstein and defensive coordinator Jen Kent.

"She has a bull's eye and a target in terms of character leadership, brains and commitment to anything," said Walker-Weinstein. "She's literally the bull's eye kind of player that you want on your team."

Walk-ons are scarce at the Division I level in any sport, but the deep and rich talent pool in women's lacrosse makes it especially difficult to discover hidden gems, let alone at the power conference level and even more so in the ACC. Three of the top four teams in the RPI are from the conference, and four of the top five teams in the ILWomen/IWLCA poll were the four best teams from the league.

Playing onto any of those rosters is a mountainous climb and not one Welch ever thought to pursue out of high school. She had been a prolific scorer at the Academy of the Holy Angels as a midfielder and led the team to two league titles but wasn't sure about playing beyond her high school career. Like most high school kids, she struggled primarily with her college decision and only decided on Boston College after a long discussion with her parents.

"My dad was always a really big supporter of me," she said. "He was kind of the one who pushed me to ask what the harm would be in trying. I was coming out of high school and wasn't recruited much, and I wanted to focus more on academics. When I decided on BC, my mom knew the father of [former Eagle All-American] Mikaela Rix, and she helped introduce the idea. I emailed Acacia a couple of times, and when I got to campus, I met up with the team and took the run test.

"It was one of those situations where my parents told me to try," she explained. "They were just really big supporters of me, which I'm super grateful for."

Joining the Eagles turned Welch into a Division I athlete, but finding playing time remained a challenge for a player now playing with a team stocked with the best talent in the country. She was on the scout team but saw game action in six games after BC rolled to win over Holy Cross, Boston University and Binghamton and later saw action in league blowouts over Duke, Louisville and Notre Dame, but even switching to defense meant she spent most of her days challenging and improving her teammates while simultaneously working within the Eagles' system.

"She crushed our run test," Walker-Weinstein said, "and we knew anybody who could run that hard and that fast had that killer instinct. We were in a position to take walk-ons and felt that everyone loved her. Jen would run our defense and really push [players] in terms of our strategy. It's always changing and always building. If defenders aren't adaptable, smart, flexible, and coachable, they fail the system, and Mel was all of those things. Jen loved her because she knew Mel could be the engine behind so much success."

Made-for-movie stories like Welch's often require a snag or speed bump, a larger-than-life adversary somewhere along the line. The decision to earn a spot on BC would have been that part of her story, but a torn ACL ended her sophomore season in 2019 before it ever began. The next year, she returned to play in the season-opener against UMass, but a second torn ACL ended the year before COVID-19 arrived and canceled the rest of the season after seven games.

To recap, a walk-on qualified for a national finalist's roster and tore her ACL. She missed her sophomore season and returned only to tear her ACL again before her junior season ran into a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Two lost seasons and an unsure future for the rest of the world?

Sounds like the part of the story where the silver lining shines through.

"Sam Apuzzo, Dempsey Arsenault, Kayla Treanor, all these incredible players had gone through it and come back to play incredibly," Welch said. "So I figured that I could do it by working hard [the first time around]. The second [injury] was a lot tougher on me mentally because my biggest asset was my speed, and I was really nervous that I wouldn't move as well or as fast as before. Plus there was the mental aspect of sitting out and watching.

"So I honestly got kind of lucky when COVID hit," she laughed. "I only really played in one game before I got injured, but we only had seven games. I wasn't really around lacrosse that much [after being sent home], so it made it a lot easier. I felt like I was missing less, if that makes sense, but it gave me so much more time to rehab because we were all sent home. I loved having physical therapy at home, where I could spend two or three hours just rehabbing. That really helped me get over the hump; everyone was removed from lacrosse [and] there were no sports going on. I didn't have that 'missing out' feeling."

Resetting her mind sent Welch back to BC last year en force, and she returned to the defensive unit for the full season without any incidents. She started all 21 games and usually drew the primary assignment against an opponent, and she finished the season with 13 ground balls and three caused turnovers. In the NCAA Tournament, she recovered a ground ball in each game against Fairfield, Temple, Notre Dame and North Carolina, and her backbone helped prevent Syracuse from scoring more than its two second-half goals as the Eagles won their first-ever national championship.

"She leads by example because she's so smart," Walker-Weinstein said. "She's capable of doing what we've asked her to do, but she's also keenly aware of everyone around her and how they're doing and if someone seems off, she makes sure to go talk to them. If somebody needs a kick, she'll make sure to do it, and if somebody needs something explained, she's right there. It's so unselfish, but at the same time, she focused enough on herself, and that's kept her play at a very elevated level."

Having vanquished Syracuse, the Eagles now head to Notre Dame for the ACC Women's Lacrosse Championship. Games will be played on April 27, 29, and May 1 before a week break sends the two remaining teams into the championship game hosted at the best-remaining seed. The win over Syracuse drew BC into a three-way tie with both Duke and the Orange, while North Carolina went a perfect 8-0 to clinch the conference regular season championship.

Players Mentioned

Melanie Welch

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