Why do I get the feeling that the entire story of the NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse season is going to be upset like the gameboard of Superfection, that kid’s game where the board flips if you don’t fill the squares on the board in time?
Yesterday, the No. 1 team in all the land, North Carolina, saw its 31-game winning streak snapped by Northwestern. What that does is make today’s games involving No. 2 Stanford and No. 3 Maryland some high-stakes affairs.
Stanford, which is 10-0 on the season, is in rarefied air. The Cardinal are undefeated through 10 matches for only the second time in program history, and could be No. 1 by the end of the weekend if they are able to sweep their East Coast swing against Boston College and Villanova, Attaining No. 1 would be a big accomplishment for Stanford, as well as leading scorer Aliya Polisky, a left-handed attacker who is a matchup nightmare for any team. Polisky is a wonderful player who does not come from any of the American lacrosse hotbeds; instead, she comes from the town of Franklin, Tenn., a place whose most famous resident is NASCAR champion Darrell Waltrip.
Today’s game has an extra bit of drama because Stanford’s roster has grad transfer Mallory Hasselbeck, who was, at one time, the nation’s No. 1 recruit when she enrolled at Boston College. She did lose a season to injury, but is now making the most of her chance to play at Stanford. She is already on the Tewaaraton watchlist, having scored more goals this season than in her previous three season at Boston College combined.
Now, if Stanford stumbles today, laying in wait for a possible move to No. 1 is the University of Maryland. The Terps have not been the strongest side coming through the global pandemic. The team has not won an NCAA Tournament since 2019. Since then, the Terps had a 3-3 record in the COVID-19 season, then saw its normally rock-solid form at its home ground at The Lacrosse and Field Hockey Complex (yep, we’re calling it that) fall away. In the 2024 and 2025 season, the Terrapins dropped 10 home games.
But the Terps have come back with their season-long move to the campus football stadium, as well as with a number of good players coming through the transfer portal to add to the current group. The opponent this afternoon is No. 7 Johns Hopkins, which should be a stout regional rivalry, given the fact that the men’s teams at these two colleges have played 127 times since 1985.
The women’s side, however, is a different story altogether. Maryland has won all 26 games in the rivalry; indeed, this space was at the second game these teams ever played, a 16-3 win on April 15. 2000. It was, we think, the first televised women’s lacrosse game in history.
The Blue Jays are keen to break the hex that Maryland has over them. They came close in 2021 to notching their first win over their I-95 rivals, but the Terps sent them home three times with 9-8 defeats.
I have a feeling that both the Hopkins-Maryland and BC-Stanford games will be on a knife-edge. Should be interesting to see who comes out of this part of the week undefeated.