North Carolina women’s lacrosse coach Jenny Levy describes her senior class and her team as “goal-oriented.”
Levy can easily list the names of all of her seniors and all the great things about them. There are seven seniors this year: Alyssa Andress, Kelly Devlin, Mallory Frysinger, Devin Markison, Aly Messinger, Sammy Jo Tracy and Megan Ward. And they are, as Levy says, “great leaders”, “driven individuals” and “a cohesive group.”
They are also a successful group. They won 18 games and a National Championship in their first year with the Tar Heels, 15 games in 2014 and 18 games in 2015. They will go to four straight NCAA Tournaments and have only lost four ACC regular season games in their careers.
You’d think with all those accomplishments, they would sit back on their laurels a little bit. But not this senior class.
Not this team.
This team still has goals — even after a 15-14 overtime win against Syracuse in the ACC Tournament final on Sunday — and is working as hard as ever to check them off.
They wanted revenge on the Orange for knocking them out of the last two ACC Tournaments. In 2014, Syracuse defeated North Carolina 9-7 in the quarterfinals. A year later, the Orange defeated the Tar Heels again, this time in the tournament final and in double overtime.
Losing another one to the Orange, as talented and as well-coached as they are, was a non-starter.
The Tar Heels were motivated “to take away what they took from us last year,” as sophomore Marie McCool said. Sunday’s game was an opportunity to make that goal a reality, and the Tar Heels capitalized.
