UVA Lacrosse Teams to Honor Yeardley Love at NCAA Tournament
UVA lacrosse coaches speak out about how their teams will play through pain.
May 11, 2010 — -- For the first time, lacrosse coaches at the University of Virginia are speaking out about the murder of player Yeardley Love and the fellow lacrosse player, George Huguely, accused in her killing. Both the men's and the women's teams will play in the NCAA tournament this weekend, less than two weeks after Love's death.
The men's coach, Dom Starsia, says his team is dealing with grief both on and off the field.
"Well, it's been such extraordinary circumstances, you know, just so tragic on so many different levels," Starsia said in a telephone interview with ESPN. "There are so many things that need to happen here on a personal level, that the lacrosse piece of this has been a little secondary until closer to today."
Therapist Phil McGraw, the host of "The Dr. Phil Show" said he thinks it's a positive step for the teams to return to competition.
"I do think it's a good thing," McGraw said on "Good Morning America." "If you can return to normalcy, then that can help the healing process."
"If they can do this and memorialize her loss and acknowledge it in some way, apparently she was a tremendous competitor, a tremendous team player… she certainly would have wanted them to play," he said.
In a conference call with reporters, the women's lacrosse coach, Julie Myers, described the moment both teams found out about the murder.
"We saw Dom right off the bat and he was shaking and just like we were," she said. "I mean, everyone had this tremendous sense of loss and, how does this happen?"
Love, 22, was laid to rest near her family's home in Baltimore last weekend. At her funeral, six of the men's lacrosse players carried her casket, a detail that did not go unnoticed.
"By carrying her casket those players also said that George Huguely is gone," USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan said. "That he is no longer one of them."
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