Boston College Athletics
Titletown Begins Defense With High Profile Matchup
February 06, 2025 | Lacrosse, #ForBoston Files
No. 1 BC begins its national title defense against No. 8 Loyola on Friday afternoon.
Acacia Walker-Weinstein stood in front of a projection screen and let herself absorb the gravity of a moment with her assistant coaches. Around them, the treasure trove of trophies lined a table in front of the picture of two hands holding the 2024 NCAA Division I Lacrosse Championship trophy aloft, but in many ways, the head coach of the Boston College lacrosse program was saying goodbye to the past.
Gone were the days of a plucky upstart chasing down the nation's best programs. No longer the intriguing team situated in the lacrosse-rich northeast, BC successfully passed North Carolina for Atlantic Coast Conference supremacy before vanquishing traditional powerhouses on the national radar, and the second national championship in four years brought a come-from-behind victory over one of the sport's most heralded blue-bloods when the Eagles beat No. 1 Northwestern, 14-13.
So much of women's lacrosse grew over the past decade, but BC's pedigree no longer sat underneath or behind the Ivy League programs that once won national titles. The Eagles weren't the second fiddle to Maryland or North Carolina or Northwestern or Virginia. According to the preseason polls and rankings, according to almost everyone in and around the sport, BC was No. 1, and in the moment of celebration, Walker-Weinstein found herself switching gears towards the start of another new season capable of raising the bar on what exactly that meant.
"The hunger is there," said Walker-Weinstein during the team's preseason media session. "Maybe even moreso than other years, this senior class had such a dominant group of seniors ahead of them for three years. That they had to follow in their footsteps, now they're in the spotlight, and it's their team. I think that's unique, but the hunger is there because the storyline for us is that we're always trying to do more for the program. How do we find more? Well we've never won back-to-back. It's not necessarily about being back-to-back champions, but [we've said] that we can achieve something that's never been achieved [at BC] before. So that's about constantly moving this program forward."
Friday afternoon opens the 2025 season with a matchup against the No. 8 Loyola Greyhounds, but opening the schedule within the unique confines of the football program's Fish Field House is almost the perfect setting for the season's reboot. No general public admission is allowed, and the head-to-head battle against last year's Patriot League champion offers an opponent with national name recognition beyond the mid-major conference that's significantly better than its non-power status.
The lack of noise that exists when playing in Alumni Stadium is therefore more pure for this type of game, and focusing all attention strictly onto the turf field enables a more intimate steeped solely in lacrosse. Even with returning names like Emma LoPinto, Rachel Clark, Mckenna Davis, Shea Dolce, Shea Baker and Lydia Colansante, the advantage to figuring out how they'll play with new arrivals lacks the nervous energy that eventually arrives with the full-blown public adoration and fandom of the spring-based months.
"We've challenged [our team] by letting them know that they don't have the crutch of being the senior-led team that they've had for the last few years," said Walker-Weinstein. "It's on [this year's leaders]. It's their team. Seeing the ACC opponents every year is why they come to BC because they want [that level of competition], but a lot of teams are young this year and that makes it all relative. We're all kind of young, but that's what makes it exciting."
BC lost a senior class that won 76 games, a pair of national championships and a pair of Atlantic Coast Conference crowns, but that core is still enough for the Eagles to find a special-based firepower if they can continue molding their roster. Transfer Mia Mascone, for example, scored 182 points while playing her first four years at Brown University, and Maria Themelis won the Ivy League's Most Outstanding Player award in 2023 before captaining Penn to the No. 6 seed in last year's national tournament.Â
Morgan Smith, meanwhile, is the sister of Ryan Smith, a five-year BC player who ended her career with 46 straight starts, a national championship and consecutive league titles.
"We have been really open to the transfer portal," said Walker-Weinstein. "We're not out there searching [for players]. We had relationships with these players from different areas of our lives. We have relationships with them, their coaches, or their families, but we don't just take anybody. We're really selective because we want to hold our culture to a really high standard. There's a risk when you take a transfer, but we've been really lucky."
Combining that skill with arguably the nation's best recruiting class is also why this team is fighting the comparison to last year's national championship roster. By itself, returning a core with three of the highest-scoring attackers in Division I - LoPinto and Clark finished first and third in last year's national numbers - and the All-American goalkeeper Dolce would've drawn a natural line through the offseason and fall program, but there's enough of a newness where that's not the case.
Maybe that's why playing Loyola in the first game is so intriguing. The Greyhounds are, by their own reputation, an incredible program, and head coach Jen Adams memorably brought her sixth-seeded team to BC for a national quarterfinal loss to No. 3 BC during the 2022 national tournament. Last year's team entered the tournament unranked but went 5-2 against ranked programs during a season-long run that ended with a 10th consecutive undefeated league record.
A win over Duke in the tournament preceded the elimination loss to Penn, but Loyola hasn't lost more than three games in a season since going 16-5 during the 2019 season. It was 5-0 when COVID-19 ended the 2020 season, and the return to the post-COVID era established a bulletproof program unfazed by the transfer portal or the name, image, and likeness era.
Even this year, the defensive back line returned Defensive Player of the Year Lily Osborne and Goalkeeper of the Year Lauren Spence, and the schedule facing Loyola included road trips both to Princeton and to Florida with return bouts at home against Johns Hopkins, Penn and Syracuse. The annual Patriot League game against Navy is in Annapolis, but the regular season champion is guaranteed to host the Patriot League Championship round after the quarterfinals head to campus sites.
"At the very end of last season," said Walker-Weinstein, "I could recognize and identify the different leadership qualities that were inserted in those big moments that we needed. There were different styles, different people, and different voices, so I think one of the strongest attributes of this team is the variety of leadership styles that we have in our senior class. I'm excited, but there's still so much that's unknown. There are a lot of really good teams out there, starting with Loyola, so this should make for a great opening weekend."
No. 1 BC hosts No. 8 Loyola at 2 p.m. on Friday, February 7, 2025 from the Fish Field House in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The game is closed to the general public but can be seen via the ACC Network Extra streaming platform available on ESPN's family of Internet and mobile device apps for cable subscribers with access to the network.
Gone were the days of a plucky upstart chasing down the nation's best programs. No longer the intriguing team situated in the lacrosse-rich northeast, BC successfully passed North Carolina for Atlantic Coast Conference supremacy before vanquishing traditional powerhouses on the national radar, and the second national championship in four years brought a come-from-behind victory over one of the sport's most heralded blue-bloods when the Eagles beat No. 1 Northwestern, 14-13.
So much of women's lacrosse grew over the past decade, but BC's pedigree no longer sat underneath or behind the Ivy League programs that once won national titles. The Eagles weren't the second fiddle to Maryland or North Carolina or Northwestern or Virginia. According to the preseason polls and rankings, according to almost everyone in and around the sport, BC was No. 1, and in the moment of celebration, Walker-Weinstein found herself switching gears towards the start of another new season capable of raising the bar on what exactly that meant.
"The hunger is there," said Walker-Weinstein during the team's preseason media session. "Maybe even moreso than other years, this senior class had such a dominant group of seniors ahead of them for three years. That they had to follow in their footsteps, now they're in the spotlight, and it's their team. I think that's unique, but the hunger is there because the storyline for us is that we're always trying to do more for the program. How do we find more? Well we've never won back-to-back. It's not necessarily about being back-to-back champions, but [we've said] that we can achieve something that's never been achieved [at BC] before. So that's about constantly moving this program forward."
Friday afternoon opens the 2025 season with a matchup against the No. 8 Loyola Greyhounds, but opening the schedule within the unique confines of the football program's Fish Field House is almost the perfect setting for the season's reboot. No general public admission is allowed, and the head-to-head battle against last year's Patriot League champion offers an opponent with national name recognition beyond the mid-major conference that's significantly better than its non-power status.
The lack of noise that exists when playing in Alumni Stadium is therefore more pure for this type of game, and focusing all attention strictly onto the turf field enables a more intimate steeped solely in lacrosse. Even with returning names like Emma LoPinto, Rachel Clark, Mckenna Davis, Shea Dolce, Shea Baker and Lydia Colansante, the advantage to figuring out how they'll play with new arrivals lacks the nervous energy that eventually arrives with the full-blown public adoration and fandom of the spring-based months.
"We've challenged [our team] by letting them know that they don't have the crutch of being the senior-led team that they've had for the last few years," said Walker-Weinstein. "It's on [this year's leaders]. It's their team. Seeing the ACC opponents every year is why they come to BC because they want [that level of competition], but a lot of teams are young this year and that makes it all relative. We're all kind of young, but that's what makes it exciting."
BC lost a senior class that won 76 games, a pair of national championships and a pair of Atlantic Coast Conference crowns, but that core is still enough for the Eagles to find a special-based firepower if they can continue molding their roster. Transfer Mia Mascone, for example, scored 182 points while playing her first four years at Brown University, and Maria Themelis won the Ivy League's Most Outstanding Player award in 2023 before captaining Penn to the No. 6 seed in last year's national tournament.Â
Morgan Smith, meanwhile, is the sister of Ryan Smith, a five-year BC player who ended her career with 46 straight starts, a national championship and consecutive league titles.
"We have been really open to the transfer portal," said Walker-Weinstein. "We're not out there searching [for players]. We had relationships with these players from different areas of our lives. We have relationships with them, their coaches, or their families, but we don't just take anybody. We're really selective because we want to hold our culture to a really high standard. There's a risk when you take a transfer, but we've been really lucky."
Combining that skill with arguably the nation's best recruiting class is also why this team is fighting the comparison to last year's national championship roster. By itself, returning a core with three of the highest-scoring attackers in Division I - LoPinto and Clark finished first and third in last year's national numbers - and the All-American goalkeeper Dolce would've drawn a natural line through the offseason and fall program, but there's enough of a newness where that's not the case.
Maybe that's why playing Loyola in the first game is so intriguing. The Greyhounds are, by their own reputation, an incredible program, and head coach Jen Adams memorably brought her sixth-seeded team to BC for a national quarterfinal loss to No. 3 BC during the 2022 national tournament. Last year's team entered the tournament unranked but went 5-2 against ranked programs during a season-long run that ended with a 10th consecutive undefeated league record.
A win over Duke in the tournament preceded the elimination loss to Penn, but Loyola hasn't lost more than three games in a season since going 16-5 during the 2019 season. It was 5-0 when COVID-19 ended the 2020 season, and the return to the post-COVID era established a bulletproof program unfazed by the transfer portal or the name, image, and likeness era.
Even this year, the defensive back line returned Defensive Player of the Year Lily Osborne and Goalkeeper of the Year Lauren Spence, and the schedule facing Loyola included road trips both to Princeton and to Florida with return bouts at home against Johns Hopkins, Penn and Syracuse. The annual Patriot League game against Navy is in Annapolis, but the regular season champion is guaranteed to host the Patriot League Championship round after the quarterfinals head to campus sites.
"At the very end of last season," said Walker-Weinstein, "I could recognize and identify the different leadership qualities that were inserted in those big moments that we needed. There were different styles, different people, and different voices, so I think one of the strongest attributes of this team is the variety of leadership styles that we have in our senior class. I'm excited, but there's still so much that's unknown. There are a lot of really good teams out there, starting with Loyola, so this should make for a great opening weekend."
No. 1 BC hosts No. 8 Loyola at 2 p.m. on Friday, February 7, 2025 from the Fish Field House in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The game is closed to the general public but can be seen via the ACC Network Extra streaming platform available on ESPN's family of Internet and mobile device apps for cable subscribers with access to the network.
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