YOU DO YOU.
By senior year, Tooker was named captain alongside Warden and attacker Morgan Hardt. At first, Klaes-Bawcombe wondered whether Tooker was the right choice, given her high-energy personality. But she saw the effect Tooker had on her class, which ultimately trickled down to the freshmen.
“Once the team bought into her and allowed her to be just herself in all her glory, it’s where the team really latched onto its leaders,” Klaes-Bawcombe said. “She just shows us that she could do it her way, she can have fun, she can be herself and the team respects her for that. They’re willing to follow her. We have a saying on our team — you do you — and I think Rebecca, to me, is the epitome of that.”
“I am so happy with this team because I think many other teams would look at it as weird, but our team just embraced it,” Tooker said.
The 12th-year coach watched as the senior class showed how to “lead with a heart … instead of saying this is my way or the highway.” They wanted all members of the team to feel comfortable speaking their minds.
On the eve of the NCAA championship game, the freshman class voted for the team to wear its Nike-sponsored gray cotton dresses — with a hot pink swoosh — to dinner at Seasons 52, a Garden City, N.Y., wine bar and grill where restaurant goers typically wear professional attire. Next thing they knew, Klaes-Bawcombe got on the bus wearing the exact same dress.
“When are we all going to dress up the same way again?” Klaes-Bawcombe said. “It was a moment for the team. Sometimes people worry what people think. Well, this team doesn’t care about what people think. They just want to lose themselves in each other. … They don’t think they’re too cool for those moments.”
Ranked No. 17 during the preseason, the Dukes entered the championship game with the same underdog mentality they rode all season long to a 22-1 finish.
In the locker room at LaValle, it was redshirt freshman goalie Molly Dougherty’s turn to speak up.
“People were talking about this being a magical year and a Cinderalla story for us,” she told her teammates. “But we put in all the hard work. That seems almost like a lie to say. That discredits everything everyone put in.
“It’s not just us,” continued Dougherty, who had only earned the full-time starting role in net after the Dukes’ CAA title game victory over Towson on May 6. “It’s all the scout players, all the freshmen taking notes during film because they want to be the best scout players that they can. It’s top to bottom a whole team effort.”
It’s the 5 a.m. runs and the extra shooting drills after practice. It’s Annie Dell, who was plagued by injuries throughout her college career, but wasn’t willing to quit, leaving no room for error for the underclassmen. It’s the 15-12 loss to Maryland on March 24 — the Dukes’ only blemish. All of these experiences fueled an underdog mentality.
Before the national championship game, the Dukes sang and danced. Gaudian’s and junior Natalie Fuccillo’s fathers wore purple wigs and threw purple streamers in the stands as players egged on their parents.
“That’s them losing themselves in the moment and not being embarrassed by their pride,” Klaes-Bawcombe said. “The parents make just as much sacrifice. We’re not embarrassed. We’re not ashamed. We’re just having fun.”
When starting senior defender Corinne Schmidt, a fellow Long Island native, was yellow-carded out of the championship game just over five minutes into the second half, Tooker made it the team’s mission to play for her because she, too, had been there since the beginning.
In that moment, Klaes-Bawcombe told Schmidt that character shows in times of struggle. Then two seniors — Elena Romesburg and Gaudian — scored back-to-back goals over the next eight minutes to take a lead that never disappeared.
“That’s when we realized we were going to win,” Romesburg said. “It’s us against the world.”
For the first time since 1990, a team that was not Maryland, North Carolina, Northwestern, Princeton or Virginia won the crown. For the first time and in its 50th season, James Madison was a national champion.
“I just love that no one ever thought that we would be able to do this,” Gaudian said. “It’s making a mark on lacrosse. Having those five teams in the past 28 years win over and over again, we need to make a change. It just shows that if you continue to work hard, any team can become a national champion.”