UVA women’s lacrosse rallies, wins at JMU, 14-12

The No. 8 Virginia women’s lacrosse team (5-4, 0-2 ACC) earned a 14-12 victory at No. 12 James Madison (7-1, 0-0 CAA) on Wednesday (March 18) in Harrisonburg, Va.

With the game tied, 5-5, senior Casey Bocklet (South Salem, N.Y.) found redshirt senior Liza Blue (Butler, Md.) in front of the net, with Blue smashing in a shot with five second left in the first half, the start of a 7-1 Cavalier run. Sophomore Kelly Reese (Severna Park, Md.) dodged through defenders to score with 8:08remaining, giving Virginia a 13-7 advantage. The Dukes scored five of the final six goals of the game, including scoring two in the final two minutes, but the Cavaliers held on for the win.

“It is nice to come up to James Madison and play a pretty complete game that was solid in transition, with us scoring a lot of goals and playing good defense as well,” said Virginia head coach Julie Myers. “I think we kind of took our mind off of things at the very end when we let JMU score three goals, but I feel we were pretty consistent straight through. We really didn’t give them much of a chance to get some momentum going. JMU with momentum is a really dangerous team. I really feel good about beating a quality opponent tonight and picking up another win.”

Blue, with four goals, was one of nine Cavaliers to score. Bocklet had a goal with three assists. Freshman Meghan Heick (Centreville, Va.) scored her first career goal.

James Madison’s Stephanie Finley and Betsy Angel each scored hat tricks.

Virginia had a 29-26 edge in shots and led 16-12 in draw controls.

JMU scored the first two goals of the game, but Virginia answered with three-straight scores, capped by Blue’s first goal of the game with 18:31 remaining. After JMU tied the game, 3-3, Blue and freshman Kasey Behr (Northport, N.Y.) scored back-to-back goals to put Virginia up 5-3. JMU answered with back-to-back scores to tie the game at five until Blue’s shot with five seconds remaining in the half.

Bocklet opened the second half with an unassisted goal 1:44 into the period, followed by Heick’s score. After a Dukes’ goal, senior Courtney Swan (Vero Beach, Fla.), Blue, sophomore Posey Valis (Baltimore, Md.) and junior Kelly Boyd (Baltimore, Md.) scored four-straight goals to give Virginia a 12-6 lead.

This was the second-straight victory for the Cavaliers over a ranked opponent as Virginia defeated No. 11 Princeton, 18-11, on Sunday.

The Cavaliers will be back at home on Saturday, March 21 to host No. 4 Duke at 1 p.m. at Klöckner Stadium.

Single-game reserved seats are available for all women’s home games for $7. Single-game general admission adult tickets for women’s home games are $5, while youth (18 and under), seniors (60 and over), and UVa faculty and staff tickets are $4 each.