The NCAA Division III women’s lacrosse tournament can almost certainly be given a new title, one which shows the absolute dominance of one conference within its competitive framework.
That’s because, after today’s quarterfinal round, three-quarters of the surviving teams are from the New England Small College Athletic Conference.
Defending champion Middlebury had a dominant win over The College of New Jersey. In the other half of the bracket, four NESCAC teams yielded two survivors; Tufts beat Williams, while Wesleyan outlasted Trinity.
Now, before we go deeper in the weeds, we do need to mention that the fourth national semifinalist in the Division III Tournament is Salisbury State University, which took down Christopher Newport 17-4. Lest we forget, this is another situation of history repeating itself across sports. Last fall, Newport ended Salisbury’s field hockey season.
Of the four semifinalists, I think the most interesting of the lot is Wesleyan. The Cardinals have made the Final Four for only the second time in their 50-year program history.
The team’s head coach, Kim Williams, was a former player at C.W. Post University, where she won a national championship under head coach Meg McNamara, who played at the University of Maryland for Cindy Timchal, which makes Williams a second-generation part of the Timchal Coaching Tree.
Williams has assembled an interesting and diverse team which includes players from championship-caliber school teams like Summit Oak Knoll (N.J.), Hingham Notre Dame Academy (Mass.), Suffern (N.Y.), and North Caldwell West Essex (N.J.). Williams has also players from California, western Pennsylvania, and even a charter school near Atlanta, which goes to show how well she has assembled this team.
The Cardinals are built from the goal out; they have allowed double-digit goals only twice this season — in a run-and-gun win against MIT, and in a one-goal loss to Tufts.
How has Wesleyan been able to put together such a defensive resume? Keep an eye on defensive midfielder Lindsey Diomede, who leads the team in ground-ball pickups and caused turnovers, and is second on the team in draw controls. Despite all of that action, she has picked up exactly one green card this entire season.
It should be interesting to see how well the teams match up on Friday, and the degree to which Salisbury takes on the “us against the world” mentality against its NESCAC opposition.