BC Preps For Big East's Western Team

No matter how anyone tries to slice the pie, lacrosse is still an eastern-based sport. Its origins locate into the lands of upstate New York and Ontario-based Canada, and its strongholds remain a stretch of the United States ranging from New England to the Mid-Atlantic with coastal New York, Long Island, New Jersey and Maryland dotting the landscape prior to Virginia and the Carolinas.

That hasn't stopped it from becoming one of the fastest-growing sports in North America, and even though it remains recognized for the geographical power located squarely in the ACC's footprint, the women's game has started to take root out west by offering new perspectives on an older, more exclusive environment. NCAA programs, the kind that normally wouldn't exist in a previous world, are not only popping up with more frequency but succeeding because of those differences.

On Sunday, the flagbearer and torch carrier of those western teams, Denver, will play No. 3 Boston College in an NCAA Tournament game hosted by the Eagles after defeating the America East champion Vermont Catamounts, 16-3, on Friday night.

"[There are] a ton of really good teams [in the tournament]," said BC head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein, "and a bunch of teams that are playing really well, teams that had success throughout the season. Defensively, they're all really solid and aggressive, and Denver and some of these other teams have a lot of firepower on offense. What I'm really excited about is all the different draw matchups and the different challenges that will bring to our team."

The Denver program dates back to the last year of the 20th century but really picked up steam five years later when it hired Cathy Reese, now the head coach at Maryland. Anchored by the emergence of membership in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, she built the Pioneers into a 15-win program by her last season, and after a transition to Liza Kelly, Denver finally won its first conference championship in 2013 after failing in several attempts to dethrone Stanford.

It was the only conference championship Denver won before realigning into the Big East, a move that both coincided and preceded the Pac-12's decision to form its own league after Arizona State began sponsoring women's lacrosse. The decision ultimately left a number of schools without a home, but Denver, having joined its men's program in the Big East in 2017, was already challenging for a championship.

To a degree, it was a seamless transition after Denver attacked its new league and qualified for the Big East Championship in its first year before losing to Florida, another associate member of the conference, but a win over Georgetown in the semifinals a year later clinched the program's second NCAA Tournament appearance. The next year, a near-miss against the Hoyas ended in a double-overtime loss before Denver narrowly lost out on the Final Four with a second consecutive national tournament loss to Maryland.

Denver hasn't lost a conference regular season game in three consecutive seasons, though the 2020 season was canceled due to COVID-19, and qualified for its fourth consecutive tournament this year when it beat Georgetown for the Big East's postseason championship. Drawn into a bracket against Vermont, an America East champion for the first time, it provided a bit of star power that came to full fruition when BC earned the No. 3 overall seed to host the bracket.

"We have to keep getting better," Walker-Weinstein said of the national tournament's offering. "We have to address some of the weaknesses that we outlined and identified from the Carolina game [in the ACC Championship]. And then we have to take it one game at a time and focus a lot on our leadership [and] a lot on our mental toughness. It's one game at a time until there's no more games to play because we're going to win a national championship."

Building that success wasn't a coincidence. Denver's roster is teeming with players from lacrosse hotbeds, and leading scorer Bea Behrins is a graduate student who matriculated west after growing up in New Jersey. The Pioneers are a lethal combination in that regard, a group built by players from New Jersey and Maryland but also from the emerging lacrosse regions in Texas and the Midwest.

Its national appeal makes it a place for players to attend when they don't simply want to stay home, but the growth of the game even out west gives the Pioneers a fertile proving ground on which to draw from. It's a western team on par with the Pac-12, but it plays in a league that hosts games in the DMV and up through Pennsylvania and the Northeast. The presence of Marquette and Butler offer a shortened window out to Colorado, and the future addition of Xavier means the Pioneers will open rivers and avenues through Ohio and the heartland with its accessibility.

It's a sign seen in the team's success, which this year included a turn against BC, the defending national champion. The Eagles traveled to Colorado in March and were given everything they could handle by Denver in a 9-5, BC win, but the third quarter went completely scoreless, a first for BC this season.

Most of that can be attributed to the weird conditions. Snow fell throughout the game, and temperatures at the opening draw barely tipped 15 degrees. Wind chills hovered around zero, and after that third quarter, officials made the decision to call the game after three quarters.It was, at the time, the first loss for Denver, and it remained the only defeat until the Pioneers lost to James Madison.

Sunday's game won't be like that - the 85-degree temperatures on Saturday aren't exactly frost-inducing weather - but a shift in the forecast means the game will possibly feature showers over the Newton Campus lacrosse field. It's a blessing in disguise because the artificial turf heats up under a beating hot sun, but it also means the team's last practices endured some extreme weather unlike many game situations in Massachusetts this year.

"You have to anticipate heat," said Walker-Weinstein, "and we started to address hydration needs [last week]. We'll see what our recovery needs, our fuel needs, and make sure we understand our player management and load with that heat [for preparation]. But it is what it is. It's what we've wanted all year, so we're going to enjoy it and not treat it as a variable distraction."

Boston College and Denver will fire away at 1 p.m. from the Newton Campus Soccer & Lacrosse Field. Television coverage begins at 1 p.m. on ESPN+, which is available for all online subscribers and is not part of cable providers' ACC Network coverage.

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