Season over, Duke women's lacrosse coach reflects

PHILADELPHIA -- Kerstin Kimel had held her composure for long enough.

On Friday night at Franklin Field, the Duke women's lacrosse coach watched her team fall in the national semifinal game for the third consecutive season. To make this loss worse, the Blue Devils had built a 13-4 second-half lead over Virginia, only to watch it all fall away in the final 20 minutes of regulation for a 14-13 loss. The winning goal came with nine seconds left, and Duke was unable to get off a shot before the buzzer.

After going through the motions of the handshake line, Kimel answered game-related questions about the collapse in her postgame news conference. Not one question had been asked in relation to the men's lacrosse team and the scandal that engulfed the school's lacrosse program for the last year. But now she was walking through the hall to get back to her team's locker room. As she stepped outside the building, the time had come to talk about not just this season, but the previous 14 months.

"The last two years was probably the most unbelievable of my professional career," said Kimel, 35, unable to fight back tears as she stood outside the stadium's gates. "One reason is how close we have come to realizing our potential as a team and two is with what happened to the men's lacrosse team. As an educator and coach, you work with kids. Kids make mistakes and kids pay for mistakes, but they've paid, and the program has paid so much more than what they deserve."

Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, the three Duke men's lacrosse players accused of rape and kidnapping last year, never played for Kimel. Still, their names became synonymous with Duke lacrosse. Guilty by association, Kimel's women were seen as sisters-in-crime. "There are brothers and sisters, boyfriends and girlfriends over the year that have brought the team together, but throughout everything that happened they needed our support more than ever," said Kimel.

Last year's run to the Final Four, which ended in an 11-10 double overtime loss to eventual champion Northwestern, was overshadowed by the men's scandal. When the Duke women came out sporting political statements of support in honor of the fallen men on their headbands and sweatbands, skeptics questioned the propriety of supporting the accused, especially as women propping up alleged rapists.

"Last year's experience with cameras zoomed in on our player's headbands and wristbands was surreal," Kimel said. "Immediately people questioned our decision to let them make those statements, but we knew the truth and we stood by it."

Following that game at Nickerson Field on Boston University's urban campus, Kimel expressed her disappointment in the media. Cameras and notepads had awaited the players when they left their dorms in the weeks following the allegations. Even on their way to practice, reporters seeking comment on the men sought their opinion. None of Kimel's players were at that infamous stripper party on March 13, but their support was viewed as knee-jerk and a female extension of the Duke's old boy network.

"Not once was one of our players asked about her experience with rape, we were just burned for supporting the men," said Kimel of her players' right to choose sides. "We got hateful e-mails from people that were just cruel."

It was the women, though, who carried the Duke brand name on the field. When wearing Duke gear was unfashionable, they donned the attire. While the men's faces appeared as headshots and their names scrolled the bottom of the screen on news networks, the women took to the field. Without shoulder pads or facemasks to hide them or offer a buffer zone, they sat in classes listening to professors rail against the lax code of conduct that the lacrosse programs purportedly allowed to fester. All the while, Kimel acted in support of both teams.

"When things were in limbo with the men, Kerstin really stepped up as someone who was really the coach of both teams for a while there," said Mike Pressler via phone on Friday. "Her steadfastness and support were amazing. Players who just needed help would stop in and see her. They knew her strength."

Twelve years earlier, Pressler had been on the search committee that hired Kimel, the first-ever women's lacrosse coach at Duke. Having won a national championship as player at Maryland in 1992 and coached just one season at Davidson after graduating, Kimel, just 23, came to Duke with Pressler serving as a mentor.

"I drew strength from Mike all this year because he promised that the truth would be told in the situation," said Kimel as her son, Mac, stood by for a hug. Before leaving for last year's Final Four, Kimel invited Pressler, then a coach without a team, to address her players.

"That gesture meant the world to me," said Pressler, who spoke to the Duke women for 15 minutes and thanked them for their support.

With another season ending in heartbreak on Friday night, the women's team has no more games left. At noon Saturday, they boarded a bus to see the men play in their national semifinal at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. Leaving their loss behind in the City of Brotherly Love, the women once again assumed their sisterly role.

"It's bittersweet for us to be able to watch them play form the stands because we'd rather be playing for our own championship," said Kimel. "It's been a long year. All we can do is root for them back on the field."