Gators lacrosse returns to Final Four after 12-year absence
At the time of UF's stunning 14-13 overtime loss to Syracuse in 2012, Amanda O'Leary figured it would be the first of many Final Fours for her third-year program. Instead, her Gators have consistently come up short, including seven losses during the Elite Eight.
GAINESVILLE — Florida attacker Danielle Pavinelli went to the Gators’ first Final Four in 2012.
Pavinelli, a Long Island, N.Y., native, was 11 and UF’s upstart program even younger facing national power Syracuse.
“I remember it being a crazy game,” she said. “I don’t even know who I was rooting for.”
Little did Pavinelli would know she and the Gators would come into their own together. The 22-year-old has helped spearhead UF’s long-awaited return to the sport’s biggest stage with a head coach surprised it’s taken so long to get back.
At the time of Florida’s stunning 14-13 overtime loss to the Orange a dozen years ago in Stony Brook, N.Y., Amanda O’Leary figured it would be the first of many Final Fours for her third-year program. Instead, her Gators have consistently come up short, including seven losses during the Elite Eight.
“You just think that that’s going to continue,” O’Leary said. “But it’s your players as much as it is us. They have to want it, they have to buy in and it’s our job to … help them along.
“This team just came in just wanting it more and doing whatever it took.”
O’Leary’s 2024 squad is different — and defiant — entering Friday’s matchup with defending national champion Northwestern in Cary, N.C.
The Gators are winners of 20 straight since consecutive losses to open the season, but also the first unseeded Final Four team since 2017 after winning three games on the road.
“Our motto this whole year is we have something to prove,” Pavinelli said. “You’ve seen it as we’ve grown this season. And here we are, playing our best lacrosse right now.”
The Gators (20-2) can serve notice with a win against No. 1 Northwestern (17-2) and sixth-year star Izzy Scane. Scane is the winner of 2023 Tewaaraton Award, the sport’s ultimate honor, and “probably the best player ever to play the game” according to O’Leary, a former player in her 29th year as a head coach.
Scane, whose 79 goals are second in the nation, and fellow attacker Erin Coykendall, who has a team-high 55 assists, are first-team All-Americans while second-teamer Madison Taylor has a team-leading 107 points.
“The best you can hope for is you contain them,” O’Leary said.
The Gators counter with a potent attack featuring a three of the squad’s 16 seniors, Pavinelli (93 points), Maggi Hall (school-record 114 points) and Liz Harrison, whose 228 draw controls are second nationally. Do-everything midfielder Emily Heller, one of three players in program history with 100 goals, 100 ground balls and 200 draw controls, is a relentless presence, while twin sister Hannah and goalkeeper Elyse Finnelle anchor the Gators’ staunch defense.
Even so, only Hall was recognized as an All-American by USA Lacrosse, earning a spot on the third team.
But O’Leary has known all along she had an exceptional mix of talent, tenacity and teamwork.
“People kind of wrote us off a little bit,” she said. “But they’re grinders.”
The 57-year-old coach, who is 241–58 (80.6%) since 2010 as the program’s only coach, can relate.
“She’s always been so supportive and pushes us to another level every day of practice,” said Pavinelli, whose older sister, Allie, was a Gator. “She doesn’t let us settle for being less. She wants us to be special.”
O’Leary also knows when to have fun.
Ice cream socials have become a tradition before games and after wins during the red-hot Gators’ school-record streak.
“That became a huge superstition of ours,” Pavinelli said. “So we just stuck with it.”
The Gators’ head coach researches the best local haunts and her players do the rest.
Pavinelli leans toward coffee ice cream with Oreo crumbles. The lithe, 5-foot-11 Hall is the Gators’ unassuming Hoover vacuum.
“Last time we went to Cold Stone I got the ‘Gotta have it,’ which is the biggest size,” Hall said. “Then Nicole didn’t want her ice cream, so she gave it to me. It was really bad.”
The Gators hope to treat themselves more than once in North Carolina.
Hall expects a national championship trophy to serve as the cherry on top.
“Not to sound cocky or anything, I don’t want it to sound that way, but I am very confident in this group of girls,” Hall said. “I’m confident in our coaching staff. I’m not scared for this weekend. Nervous? Yeah, because I’m nervous for every game.
“But I’m very excited for what’s to come.”
Edgar Thompson can be reached at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com
NCAA Final Four
When: May 24 & 26
Where: WakeMed Soccer Park, Cary, N.C.,
Who: UF (20-2) vs. No. 1 Northwestern, 3 p.m.; No. 2 Boston College (18-3) vs. No. 3 Syracuse (16-5), 5:30 p.m.
TV: ESPNU