A Tradition Of Excellence, But Winning Never Gets Old

Asking coaches about whether winning ever gets old always straddled a line for me. It felt like a cookie-cutter question, the kind of low-hanging fruit that led to some canned or cliche answer. I used to laugh at it because, at its face value, winning is what they're supposed to do. How could it, in any sense, ever feel bad?

Thinking about the question, though, changed my perception and understanding about what winning meant to a team. At every level, a coach or player is programmed to win to the degree that the negative of losing feels more intense, and I can't count the number of times I heard someone say, "Losing feels worse than winning feels good." The ones that didn't talk about that emotion discussed embracing the process over the result.

But if something always felt more intense than winning, I started to wonder if winning still carried the shine for coaches and players who managed to succeed in high volume. Did they derive the same pleasure as the teams who had never ascended the summit of their sport? Did the weight of expectation alter how they approached games considered more meaningless than postseason drama? Did winning ever get old? And how could a coach who won everything in their sport find credit for who built the tradition of excellence?

Luckily, given that Boston College lacrosse makes its sixth consecutive Final Four appearance on Friday, I didn't have to look very far to understand the answers.

"I credit the girls and the type of people that are coming to play for this team," said head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein. "They get on board with the high expectations that the coaches set, and we said it a long time ago that we were going to win a national championship. After [the first title in 2021], that goal shifted, and we want to win more. I just think these girls are very committed to being the very best that they can be in the classroom and on the field and for their families. That's what makes them special."

The transition into the spring season is always a fun time of year in New England. The cold snow melts around mid-March and is replaced with the year's first images of extended sunshine and warmth. The icy, bitter darkness of being forced indoors for the winter departs, and people venture outside for days marked by increasing activity.

This type of rebirth is accompanied by a transition into outdoor sports. Basketball and hockey finish their postseasons as lacrosse, baseball and softball really start spinning into gear, and the crossover in season ignites a passion for the newness on the fields. Colleges particularly experience the explosiveness of the change as students end their dorm-based hibernation to support their classmates.

BC lacrosse plunked its own brand of success into the middle of that conversion, and in the process, it turned into one of the Eagles' tent-pole franchises. The sport itself was exploding in popularity, but supporting a winning program that consistently competed at the top of its discipline enabled the perfect storm for people waking up from their winter doldrums.

"I credit [our winning] to the type of players that come to play at Boston College," said head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein. "These girls, there's a very unique profile. These girls that come to play for Boston College want to win a national championship. They are willing to sacrifice their personal agendas for the team, and they fight really hard for the Boston College community. That's something I really underestimated before I became a head coach. I had no idea how tight the Boston College community is."

Just over 500 people attended BC's matchup against Stony Brook in the first round of the 2016 national tournament, or the last time the Eagles failed to advance to the Final Four. Seven years later, BC averaged over 300 more fans per home game at a time when its first four games were closed to the public. The NCAA Tournament game against Penn had just under 2,000 attendees packed into Newton Campus, and a similar number attended a midweek, mid-afternoon game against Notre Dame in the NCAA Quarterfinals.

It's a wild concept, but last year, a national championship rematch between BC and Syracuse drew 4,500 fans to Alumni Stadium, and an earlier game against North Carolina saw roughly 6,000 fans file through turnstiles to witness the two best teams in the country battle to continue their respective undefeated seasons.

This weekend's trip to Cary, North Carolina hopes to replicate the success of last year's 8,000-plus fans who attended the national championship in Baltimore, Maryland, and a national television audience offers a reach that didn't exist in previous decades. Teams that win, teams that hoist the trophy, are exposed on a level that can easily make it difficult to repeat because the high is too high to simply catch one more time.

Yet BC managed to maintain its bearing as a successful team, and for the sixth consecutive season, the last weekend of the lacrosse season opens with the Eagles enjoying another shot at another national championship game. It's not gotten old, and even as national championship expectations soar, every team is individualized in the record books. There hasn't been a championship hangover, and on Friday night, a game against Syracuse, the team BC beat for the 2021 title, will stand alone for its ability to draw in the Eagles' fan base looking to celebrate one more run at the roses.

"We are always trying to change," Walker-Weinstein said. "If we stay the same, then teams can track us, and if we stay the same, to me, we aren't working hard. We are going to squeeze every last bit of intensity out of every single person on the team, including the coaching staff, for [this weekend] to be very different."

Boston College and Syracuse play in the second semifinal of the NCAA Division I Women's Lacrosse Tournament on Friday afternoon, with a scheduled start time set for 5:30 p.m. The game can be seen on national television via ESPNU, and the winner will advance to Sunday's national championship game against the winner of the Denver-Northwestern game.

A Tradition Of Excellence, But Winning Never Gets Old

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