The 21-0 West Chester lacrosse team is playing in memory of their former teammate, and the team advancing to the Final Four is helping Julia Rossi's grieving parents cope with her sudden passing.
The lacrosse sticks are somewhere. Greg and Kirsten Rossi have lost track. Maybe their daughter Julia’s old sticks are tucked in a corner of the garage of their home in Hamilton Township, N.J., or in the trunk of a car. The couple still finds it difficult to think about. They found it hard this spring to even attend a women’s lacrosse game at West Chester University, where Julia once played.
At 4 p.m. Friday, Greg and Kirsten expect to be in front of their computer, streaming the Rams’ NCAA national semifinal game against No. 4-seeded Grand Valley State. The winner will play the winner of the Florida Southern-Pace game at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Division II national championship at the University of Indianapolis.
“It is very difficult to deal with the loss of your child, and it’s something that I will probably never get over it, but what her West Chester teammates are doing this year makes us believe that Julia’s spirit is living on through them. I feel like they are celebrating who Julia was, and they’re portraying that.”Julia was playing with the idea of returning for her fifth year to play with her best friend, Lindsay Monigle, a fifth-year senior who is the Rams’ leading scorer .
Right after Julia’s death, Monigle used to go over the texts a few times a day. As the national semifinal nears, she said, she’ll go back over them again for inspiration. The Golden Rams last won a national title in 2008. Martino is the all-time winningest women’s lacrosse coach in NCAA Division II history with 384 victories, along with two national championships .“I’ve never had a situation like this before, and I found the strength through this team,” Martino said. “I’m not going to lie, I still have a tough time dealing with it. It still hurts talking about Julia.
“We do talk a lot about being No. 1 and what it means to be ranked No. 1, but we also know it really doesn’t matter unless we go out and prove it every time we play,” Monigle said. “We have a good amount of confidence going into this Final Four. Some teams in other sports think too much about being No. 1 and get overconfident. This team rides with being No. 1. We don’t get too confident. We live in the present, and we did a lot of mental toughness training this season. We work on it.
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