This story was originally published in US Lacrosse Magazine following the 2014 NCAA championship game. Because ESPNU is airing championship games from previous years this Memorial Day Weekend to fill the void left by COVID-19, we are resharing this article as it originally appeared.
The paparazzi had arrived, and Taylor Cummings couldn’t take the reporter seriously. She sat in the hot seat, camera zooming, and had a very important question to answer.
If you had to play a song right now to express how you’re feeling, what would it be?
“Eye of the Tiger,” Cummings replied.
She tried hard not to laugh, averting her eyes from Shanna Brady, her Maryland women’s lacrosse teammate turned interviewer, and the GoPro camera mounted on top of Terps attacker Kristen Lamon’s head.
Lamon wanted to capture every moment of Maryland’s march to the NCAA championship — the thrill of the fight, rising up to the challenge of their rival. Cummings, a sophomore midfielder and the best player in the country, wanted to deliver on a season-long promise to erase the sting of its triple-overtime loss to North Carolina in the 2013 final.
Cummings, Lamon and Beth Glaros, the Terps’ lone senior starter looking for her first NCAA title on her last ride, would loom large in a 15-12 victory over Syracuse in front of a raucous record crowd of 10,311 fans at Towson’s Johnny Unitas Stadium.
Maryland was the last known survivor.
***
On a rainy fall day, Terps coach Cathy Reese called players to the Varsity Team House, a recently renovated building with a film room that now resembles a movie theater. They figured it was just another preseason study session before their last lifts of fall ball.
Reese surprised them with a showing of ESPN’s “Nine for IX: The 99ers,” part of a series similar to the network’s “30-for-30” films that celebrated the 40th anniversary of Title IX, the groundbreaking gender equity legislation that revolutionized women’s sports. “The 99ers” revealed uncensored, behind-the-scenes footage of the 1999 World Cup champion U.S. women’s soccer team captured by co-captain Julie Foudy, whose effort to document the journey inspired Lamon.
Reese and her coaching staff had already watched the documentary after it premiered in August 2013. Having graduated from Maryland in 1998, Reese knew the story of the 99ers well.
“It was good for us to see going into this season because it was something that our team could really benefit from,” Reese said. “It was cool to share a little bit of history of another great sport and another great team.”
At 9 a.m., the Maryland players took their seats. When the credits rolled an hour later, Cummings, a product of the undefeated McDonogh (Md.) School dynasty so unaccustomed to the anguish of defeat she felt in 2013, left the special film session captivated and especially motivated for 2014.
“They had an amazing work ethic and that’s the kind of mentality and team chemistry Cathy wanted us to have,” Cummings said. “They had so many shots of them just fooling around with the camera and having a really good time. Kristen Lamon did the same thing with our NCAA journey. We actually ended up with some very similar footage.”
Lamon said “The 99ers” not only resonated with the team, but also with the expansion of women’s lacrosse. While the NCAA and hosting NFL teams are wringing their hands over declining attendance at the men’s lacrosse championship weekend, the NCAA final between Maryland and Syracuse was the most watched game in women’s lacrosse history.
It helped to have a home team.
“This film really reminded us why we love Maryland lacrosse so much,” Lamon said. “Being able to see the impact that our sport and my teammates, as well as other teams, have on young girls is an amazing experience — to be a part of it and visualize its growth.”
Before they left College Park for Towson, Lamon whipped out her camera as the players retreated to the locker room for their last few belongings. She shot video of their uniforms hanging in lockers, ready to be packed, and went back outside to pan the turf field at the Field Hockey & Lacrosse Complex they called home. As they boarded the bus, Lamon lingered behind and absorbed the emotion as supporters sent them off in pursuit of their first NCAA title since 2010.
***
No team has won more NCAA championships (11), played in more championship games (18) or advanced to more NCAA tournaments (30) than Maryland. And even though the Terps lost two-time Tewaaraton Award winner Katie Schwarzmann and 2013 Tewaaraton finalist Alex Aust to graduation, they knew they had a magnet in Cummings, who continually insisted, “It’s not about me.”
But when it came time for Northwestern, the team that knocked out Maryland in the 2011 NCAA final and 2012 semifinal, to devise a plan for its future Big Ten foe in yet another final four encounter, it was all about Cummings. She teed off on Penn and Duke with a combined eight goals and 15 draw controls in the second round and quarterfinals, respectively. So Wildcats’ coach Kelly Amonte Hiller deployed face-guarding specialist Kerri Harrington to stalk Cummings.
Maryland’s supporting cast made them pay for that move. Cummings loitered back by the restraining line and pulled Harrington out with her, allowing midfielder Kelly McPartland and attacker Brooke Griffin space and freedom to pick Northwestern apart in a 9-6 win.
“It got to the point that if you shut off one of us, then there were six other people who could score and make it no problem,” Cummings said.
Cummings, such a dynamic force in the midfield, still managed to grab four draw controls and win back several possessions playing defense. Before each draw, she would look for her father in the crowd. Michael Cummings played soccer at William & Mary despite being diagnosed with chronic fatigue — a condition that confined him to a bed sometimes for up to 22 hours a day.
“Every draw I take, if my dad is in the stands, I have to look at him,” she said. “It’s just something that I always have to do. He always just looks at me and claps. It’s something that really means a lot and reminds me of the people on the sidelines cheering for me.”
***
Those cheers echoed throughout Towson’s campus May 25 as Maryland arrived before its NCAA championship game showdown with Syracuse. The top-seeded Terps had already defeated the second-seeded Orange twice, including a 13-7 win in the ACC championship game, capping a six-year run atop college lacrosse’s toughest conference. The ACC, which loses Maryland to the new Big Ten conference in 2015, claimed six of the top eight seeds in the NCAA tournament.
On Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, the time had come for the Big Terp-Little Terp spectacle of Glaros and Cummings.
Every year, Maryland pairs an upperclassman (Big Terp) with an underclassman (Little Terp). This season, Glaros and Cummings developed a special bond symbolized through a shared game ritual, wearing matching red headbands. Glaros, one of just five seniors on the team, emerged on this stage as a freshman in 2011. She scored four goals in the NCAA final, but the Terps lost to Northwestern 8-7.
“This team lives and breathes with Beth,” Cummings said.
This time, Glaros scored a game-high five goals and Syracuse had no answer for Cummings, whose eight draw controls fueled a 5-0 run to start the game and a 4-0 run to give Maryland the cushion it needed in a 15-12 win.
After they celebrated, Lamon, a reserve attacker who came off the bench to score three goals, followed Cummings, Glaros, Reese and Tewaaraton finalist defender Megan Douty to the post-game press conference — her GoPro camera affixed to a backwards-facing grey and white hat with “women’s national champions” stitched on the front. Cummings who did jumping jacks as they left the locker room, smiled and made funny faces at the camera.
Cummings, who added three goals in the game, was named the most outstanding player of the NCAA championship. Four days later, she became the first sophomore to win the Tewaaraton, lacrosse’s version of the Heisman.
During the ceremony, Douty overheard Cummings’ name coming from backstage after the teleprompter failed to show the announcers’ script and whispered the good news to her teammate. “What? You heard it?” Cummings asked.
Before Douty could answer, she hugged Cummings as the announcement came and applause filled the auditorium at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
As usual, Cummings thanked her teammates, the 14ers. And as usual, she found her father in the crowd.
“To see your daughter’s name get announced, it’s incredibly humbling,” Michael Cummings said.
Almost as humbling as it is for the rest of college lacrosse to prepare for two more years of seeing Taylor Cummings face to face, out in the heat, hanging tough, staying hungry.