UVA Women's Lacrosse Looks to Build Foundation in Year 1 Under Sonia LaMonica

This was an offseason of significant change for the Virginia women's lacrosse program. From last year's roster, the Cavaliers lost multiple All-Americans, a few starting defenders, and three of their top four scorers, with those three players making up nearly 60% of UVA's scoring production last spring.

And oh yeah, Virginia also endured a coaching change for the first time in 28 years, as Julie Myers stepped down from her position as head coach. Myers left behind a strong legacy, having won 349 games and a national championship and having led the Cavaliers to the NCAA Tournament every season there was a tournament.

Attempting to fill that void and hoping to reestablish UVA as one of the top programs in women's lacrosse is Sonia LaMonica, who came to Virginia after spending the last 14 seasons as the head coach at Towson, where she led the Tigers to seven NCAA Tournament appearances and was named the Colonial Athletic Association Coach of the Year five times.

In our first meeting with Coach LaMonica this week, she was asked what her goals were as she inherited the program.

"Excellence. We want to be the best. We want to compete for championships, right? But I'm big on foundation and I'm big on culture," LaMonica said on Tuesday. "Those are the pieces that we're really focusing on. And I've always been a believer that the winning comes when you've got foundation in place, when you've got a team that is cohesive. You've obviously gotta have talent, but culture at the end of the day is what wins."

LaMonica comes to UVA with a wealth of experience, having won multiple ACC and national championships in her time as a player at Maryland and having coached Towson to four CAA Tournament Championships and 12 seasons with a record of .500 or better in her 14 years leading the Tigers. But there's an added challenge for LaMonica this spring, as she tries to learn and get to know her new team all while preparing them for the upcoming season.

"The biggest [challenge] is learning and understanding a new group of personalities and skillsets," LaMonica said. "Every year, even if you're at the same institution, you're figuring out - what have we got this year? What are we working with? What do we look like? So, that was to a whole other level because we're obviously trying to learn and understand the relationships on top of that. It's a fun transition and a good transition."

The question of "what are we working with" is especially difficult to answer this season, as Virginia must also deal with the departures of several key players from last year's team.

Two-time First-Team All-ACC selection Rachel Clark, who led the Cavaliers with 76 points on 63 goals and 13 assists, transferred to ACC rival Boston College last summer. Ashlyn McGovern, who had 61 goals last season, graduated last spring, ending her career third in UVA program history in goals (204) and seventh in points (224). Jaime Biskup graduated and transferred to Vanderbilt after tallying 46 points on 36 goals and 10 assists. UVA also lost some key contributors at midfield and on defense, including two-time All-American Aubrey Williams, who leaves as the program's all-time record holder in career and single-season draw controls, as well as Annika Meyer and Nina Garfinkel, who started all 18 games on defense in 2023.

Still, Sonia LaMonica is excited about the roster she has in her first season in Charlottesville and is most encouraged by the attitude and energy this group brings to the field.

"We've got an energized group. They're hungry," said LaMonica. "I think we're fast and I think we're playing playing well as a team."

Experience is important to any team, but that factor becomes even more essential in the midst of a coaching change. Even with a significant amount of roster turnover, Virginia has several veterans LaMonica identified as players who will offer critical leadership for the team this season.

"Morgan Schwab has been a quarterback. She's been a pivotal piece of the puzzle. We're gonna look to lean on her in a bigger role this year as well as Kate Miller," LaMonica said. "Kate Miller has been a real presence. She's been very consistent in her play. She's a sharpshooter. In the midfield, Mack Hoeg is critical as well as Kiki Shaw. So there's four right there that we're gonna really count on to raise the level of the youngsters around them."

Having Morgan Schwab back will be vital for UVA's offense, as the senior attacker paced the Cavaliers with 49 assists and also tallied 20 goals on just 38 shots, finishing second on the team with 69 total points last spring. Senior midfielder Mackenzie Hoeg, who had 40 goals last year, will be one of Schwab's top targets as she facilitates the offense. Kate Miller contributed passing and scoring with 17 goals and 26 assists and Kiki Shaw added 18 goals last season. With those experienced players coming back and several younger players ready to take a leap into a larger role, Virginia is hoping to once again field one of the top offenses in the ACC this spring.

On the defensive end, seniors Maggie Bostain and Devon Whitaker offer much-needed experience for a group looking to make significant improvements. In the last several seasons, it was often the defense that ended up holding the Cavaliers back from keeping up with some of the top teams in the country. LaMonica recognized that weakness and wants to correct that course immediately.

"That was just one of the key areas coming into this program that I wanted to really stamp as an area that we're strong at and balance that out with the prolific offense that Virginia has been known for," LaMonica said of the defense.

Behind that defense, it seems the Cavaliers will have new face in between the pipes. Ashley Vernon and Abby Jansen split the minutes at goalkeeper last season, with both players getting more than 500 minutes of playing time on the season, but neither registering particularly impressive save numbers. Vernon and Jansen are both still on the roster, but LaMonica says it'll be sophomore Mel Josephson getting the start in cage for UVA.

"We've got five goalies on roster. We knew coming in that that was an area that we really need to develop. We want to be strong in our goalkeeping skills and our defensive unit," LaMonica said. "Mel Josephson has really stepped up. She didn't play any minutes last year, but she has been working hard throughout our coaching staff coming in this fall. I'd say it was competitive for awhile, but Mel's been the most consistent. I'm really excited to see how she handles the pressures that come with being a starting goalie."

More than any changes in personnel or on-field strategies, LaMonica is hoping to see her new team play with a sense of toughness and grit, traits she wants to be attributed to Virginia women's lacrosse in her time leading the program.

"We haven't just taken exactly what we've done at our former school to here. It looks a little bit different, but I think at the end of the day, we're expecting our D unit and essentially everybody across the field to play tough, to play hard, to play gritty, to fight for the ground balls. That's going to be our identity."

LaMonica will make her debut as Virginia's head coach on Friday, when the Cavaliers travel to Lynchburg to take on Liberty at 4pm on ESPN+. UVA will then return to Charlottesville to host Stanford on Sunday at 1pm at Klockner Stadium.

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