DURHAM, N.C-On a cold, windy, rainy day at Koskinen Stadium, the sun broke through the cloudy sky just long enough to shine on Virginia senior midfielder Amy Fromal as she scored the game-winning goal in the closing minutes against the No. 3 Duke women's lacrosse team Saturday.
Standing alone in front of the Blue Devil goal, Fromal whipped a feed from senior midfielder Kelly Allenbach into the back of the net with 2:27 left in the game, breaking an 8-8 tie and boosting the No. 8 Cavs to a 10-8 win.
"I actually missed that same shot in warmups, so I was nervous," Fromal said. "I didn't even see it go in. I just saw the back of the net move, so I didn't even know what happened. Then all of a sudden, everyone started going crazy. It was amazing."
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"After our first and second goals, we believed that we could" win the game, senior defender Ashley Widger said. "We knew we had them. Even when we were down by two [at the half], people just knew we could do it. It's a turning point in our season - a lot of good things to come."
Early in the game, things did not look good for the Cavaliers. The quick-striking Duke attack left the Cavs reeling as the Blue Devils scored five goals in a row. Virginia coach Julie Myers called a timeout to calm her players down after Duke made it 5-0 with two goals in nine seconds. The timeout seemed to work, as the Cavs cut the lead to 6-4 at halftime.
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The Virginia defense stepped up its play after the timeout and held the Devil attackers to just three goals for the rest of the game - a 48-minute span.
"That was the first time this season we played a strict man-to-man defense the whole game," Widger said. "We usually play a zone. We marked up three of their big scorers with our big defenders and just did a phenomenal job."
The rain-soaked field didn't make things any easier for the Cavalier defenders.
"We laid off a little bit, and we only started to pressure a couple of girls, rather than everywhere," Widger said. "If an attacker gets one step on you and you slip, the rest of the defenders have to hustle back and try to pick her up. We sagged off a little bit more on most of the players, but we still pressured the girls that weren't confident with the ball."
Duke never had a chance to tie the game after Fromal's goal. Allenbach scored over the goalkeeper's right shoulder with 40 seconds left to seal the victory.
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