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mily Boissonneault isn’t pitching recruits on NCAA championship aspirations, conference title runs or other similar accomplishments.

When Pittsburgh officially enters the Division I varsity ranks in the spring of 2022, wins could be hard to come by in the gauntlet of the ACC. The 29-year-old first-time head coach has been tasked with building this program from the ground up, and she believes the athletic department is “doing it the right way.”

She wants student-athletes who will do things the right way, too.

“This is an opportunity to see what you can become while you’re at Pitt,” Boissonneault said. “We talk about failure and how that’s part of this process. Buying into failing until we succeed.”

And that’s not a bleak outlook. Boissonneault, an assistant on the James Madison team that defied expectations and won an NCAA title in 2018, is hoping to build an underdog culture. It worked for the Dukes, after all.

“We have to put in a lot of work and a lot of pride to make up the difference that we may have to make up,” Boissonneault said. “It’s a huge blueprint to what we can do here at Pitt.”

Because Pitt is still about a year-and-a-half away from the fall of 2021, Boissonneault doesn’t have much of a roster constructed just yet. There are nine players signed, including Australian midfielder Abby Thorne, and only three athletes were on campus before schools shifted to virtual learning in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Caroline Lederman, Kierin Ratliff-Kailbourne and Payton Reed all signed at the same time in mid-March. That makes sense after hearing more about the trio.

The three rising juniors grew up together in Rochester, N.Y. Ratliff-Kailbourne and Reed both went to Honeoye Falls-Lima High School, and Lederman went to nearby Brighton High School.

They played on Pittsburgh’s club team the past two seasons, winning a national championship in 2019. Ratliff-Kailbourne didn’t go to Pitt thinking she’d be a varsity athlete. There were other schools at which she could have played at the NCAA level, but the academics at Pitt were more important to her than those other opportunities.

The fact that Pitt is adding women’s lacrosse seemed too good to be true.

“Last April, there was an article that came out saying that Pitt was going to get a D-I team, and I know me and the two other rising juniors who played on the club team were super excited about that,” Ratliff-Kailbourne said.

Having a juggernaut club team on campus would theoretically give Boissonneault a strong collection of talent from which to choose, but Lederman, Reed and Ratliff-Kailbourne initiated the first contact between themselves and the new varsity coach.

“They all sought me out as soon as I got hired [in June 2019],” Boissonneault said. “They all had reached out to me. LSN had played their national championship game, so I had a chance to watch it and learn about them.”

Before extending offers, Boissonneault reached out to Kevin Tidgewell, Pitt’s club coach. She called Tidgewell a “phenomenal resource,” and there’s a mutual respect between the two coaches.

It would be understandable if Tidgewell felt as if his players were being poached from his team, but that’s not the case. Tidgewell said more lacrosse is better for Pittsburgh, which is a big sports town but doesn’t have an overwhelming lacrosse presence.

“Her program is her program,” Tidgewell said. “She has different pressures. Being a varsity program in the ACC is a completely different thing. The club team, we’ve had great success and we’ve had this long history, so we’re always open, but I want her to have the space to create what she wants.

“I try to make myself available, but I don’t want to step on toes.”

Going from club to varsity — let alone in the daunting ACC — will be a challenge for the three friends from Rochester. They’ve already received hands-on instruction from Boissonneault and assistant coach Daniela Eppler, taking advantage of 8 a.m. training sessions twice a week for the five or six weeks they were on campus with them.

“The talent jump, there’s room for growth in all of them,” Tidgewell said. “There’s dedication to the sport in all of them. It’s more so about them wanting to test themselves and knowing what they want out of their college experience.”

By the time they play their first varsity games, all three will be seniors. While some seniors balk at the idea of new challenges awaiting them for their final years of college, Ratliff-Kailbourne jumped at the opportunity for this one.

Because the bulk of her courses will be finished by the time 2022 rolls around, she said it was the perfect time to try.

“It stinks that we won’t be playing games for two years, but academically, I’ll be in a great place with my major and I’ll have a lot of my really tough classes out of the way,” she said.

Everyone involved is aware that winning won’t come easy, and Boissonneault said that there’s been no pressure from the athletic department to win right away. She said she’s been encouraged to do this right by bringing in the right players and coaches to build something from scratch.

Ratliff-Kailbourne, in particular, has done a lot of winning since her high school days. At Honeoye Falls-Lima High School, her teams won four sectional titles and appeared in state championship games three times. She was 19-0 on last year’s club team and 7-0 before this year was cancelled because of the pandemic.

She could have continued to chase WCLA national championships. This seemed more appealing.

“I’m a very competitive person,” she said. “I don’t like to lose, but going into it kind of knowing that it might happen a lot, it just leaves a lot of room for us to grow as a team and realize how good we could be and how good we’ll have to be to compete at the ACC level.”

Actually making waves in the ACC could be years away. It’s an overwhelmingly tall task, and one that Boissonneault said she often finds herself thinking about.

In the last update to the Nike / US Lacrosse Division I Women’s Top 20 on March 9, the ACC had three teams — North Carolina (No. 1), Notre Dame (No. 2) and Syracuse (No. 5) — in the top 10. Virginia (No. 16) and Boston College (No. 20) were in the top 20, and Virginia Tech was receiving consideration. Duke had also been ranked during the season.

“I run through it all the time,” Boissonneault said. “There are days where I can feel my nerves kind of coming up, but then I have to remember that this is a process. I don’t even have a team on campus to prepare. It’s easy to get ahead of ourselves, but I tend to try and refocus myself on the here and now.

“I don’t even know what my kids look like together yet.”

Boissonneault said she tells herself constantly that she has the tools to be successful. She has the support of Eppler and from those in the athletic department. Having been part of a successful program at James Madison, she knows how to win.

Even if it might take some time.

“When the right pieces come together, anything can really happen,” she said. “It’s my job to get them to the right level, but a special group of girls can push the limits.

“Whether Year 1 is successful or not, I know I’m doing the right things.”