Small block letters crawl their way up Lindsay Lewis’s wrists, the black ink still crisp despite two hours of intermingling with bright afternoon sun and sweat. The letters are small, and under the cover of her slim wrists, barely noticeable. But they’re not meant for anyone else to see. They are a constant reminder of what has happened and what lies ahead.
“SOLID” reads one, the letters curling up her forearm in neat print. “STEADY” reads the other, matching in perfect symmetry. Solid and steady. Small words, but full of meaning.
Halfway across the globe, Alyssa Trudel is on her computer, checking in when she can as the Boston University women’s lacrosse team wraps up a win over the University of Oregon for its fourth straight win. The view may not be as good from the ex-Terriers’ new home outside Manchester, England as it is from the friendly bleachers of Nickerson Field, but it’s good enough to see exactly how her former team played. Solid and steady.
And so those two small words have become a mantra for the Class of 2006, a group that continues to try and live out the dream of its departed captain in her own terms.
“It’s our responsibility to come out and play, in her words, solid and steady every time we’re on the field,” said senior Mary Beth Miller, the second-leading scorer on this year’s club. “She stressed a lot that you don’t realize how fast it goes by, and before we know it our season’s going to be over. She looks back on her season last year and it’s like, ‘I should’ve done this, I should’ve done that.'”
Which explains why she was so upset. After the Terriers dropped a league game to the University of Maryland-Baltimore County on April 1 — a game that likely will cost BU its second straight America East title — Trudel held an impromptu conference with this year’s seniors in an online chat room. And it wasn’t friendly.
“To be blatantly honest, she was like, ‘What in the hell are you guys doing?'” said senior captain Lindsay Lewis. “She kind of laid us on the line and said that this is supposed to be our team, and no matter what else is going on we’re the leaders, and it’s on our shoulders.”
And Trudel had every right to be angry. The former captain was the heart and soul of the Terriers a year ago, leading BU to a berth in the national quarterfinals. Her 238 career points were the second-most ever by a Terrier, and her 95 assists were the most. But none of that meant anything without a national championship, and when Trudel left Commonwealth Avenue empty-handed last year, her hopes hinged on her teammates to fit the final puzzle piece into place.
Yet it quickly became clear that the Terriers didn’t have the answers without Trudel to guide them. Ranked as high in third in national preseason polls, BU was a unanimous favorite to once again capture the America East title. But somewhere along the line things went sour, as the team stumbled out to a 2-2 start and suffered its third loss of the year — one more than the club had all of last season — at the hands of UMBC.
It wasn’t long after that when a mantra was born.
“I caught a few of the seniors online and we were chatting in a chat room — geeks, I know,” Trudel said. “I just reminded them to get back to the core of the team, their class. They have been the core of the starting lineup their whole careers. I just reminded them that besides all the pressure and whatnot, they just needed to be solid and steady, to lead the team all the way this year. Nothing fancy, back to basics, do what they all do best.”
And that night, something clicked. The Terriers proceeded to rip off six straight wins to vault their way back into a tie for first place in the conference, with the seniors leading every step of the way.
The very next game after the UMBC loss, Miller ripped off seven points in an 11-8 victory over Harvard University, and scored a buzzer-beating game-winner to upset Georgetown University two days later. The Georgetown game was also the first of five straight multiple-goal games for Lewis, who has now netted at least a hat trick in each of her past four contests. Both girls now have well over 200 points in their careers, vaulting into third and fourth place on the Terriers’ all-time list.
And the next name either Terrier passes will be Trudel.
“It sucks to have to break the record of someone that you looked at as one of the best players you’ve ever played with,” said Lewis, who already passed Trudel’s all-time goals mark. “I mean it’s an honor, but at the same time it’s almost like you don’t want to be better than her. It makes you feel confident in yourself that she did something to help you, like she got us to the point where we are. With 200 points, I’m sure 50 percent of those assists that Mary had were to Alyssa.”
Miller certainly has reaped the benefits, recently passing Trudel to become BU’s all-time assist leader and needing 10 points in her final two regular-season games to match Trudel’s second-place mark of 238 career points. But she knows that if Trudel would want anyone to break her records, it would be this year’s seniors.
“Her dad even emailed me last week congratulating me, saying how proud he was of us,” Miller said. “Alyssa was the one who set the mark for that record … so to be able to match it or to go above and beyond it is because Alyssa set that standard.”
It was a standard that Trudel was quick to mold during her time at BU, when she became a leader for the team — especially for the current senior class. As one of only three Terriers in her own class, Trudel was thrust into a leadership role from her first day on campus, and she embraced it.
“We really demanded a lot out of her,” said BU coach Liza Kelly. “For the senior class in particular, there was no life without Alyssa until their senior year, so I think she was very instrumental in helping their games improve and their leadership roles improve as well.”
So it comes as no surprise that Trudel was a constant presence in her teammates’ lives. The former captain, who is currently between jobs and on a five-week tour of Europe, was infamous at BU for her “chalk talks,” when she would take teammates aside and drill them on what they needed to do to improve.
“She’ll pull you aside no matter what, no matter where you are, whether you’re going out at night or whether you’re just sitting at home the night before a game or Sunday morning eating breakfast,” Lewis said. “Just rambling about lacrosse, what you need to do, where the team needs to be, and especially getting you ready for whatever came ahead.”
And in doing so, she cemented her influence in all of the girls’ lives — an influence that took on as many different forms as Trudel seemingly had personalities.
“You really can laugh at any situation with Alyssa,” Lewis said. “She’s your best friend, she’s your mom, she’s all of the above — and she’s your little sister at times.”
But now all of those personalities are gone, and perhaps the most important personality of all — that of a two-year captain and unquestioned leader of the team — is also the most missed.
Suddenly it’s Lewis, Miller and the other seniors that have the responsibility of giving “chalk talks” of their own, and for many of them, that’s been a tough transition. There’s no doubt that this year’s seniors — a group of nine girls that also includes Lewis’s fellow tri-captains Michelle Bussichella and Danica Strutt — have performed on the field, but most were used to leaning on Trudel to lead in every other way.
“[Alyssa] was definitely a great player, but there are a lot of players that can go out and lead by example — I think Alyssa was also a very emotional and vocal leader,” Kelly said. “Lindsay has always been a leader by example, as well as Mary, and I think that they had relied on Alyssa in the past to be the loud one. So I think now in Alyssa’s absence, it has fallen on their shoulders to kind of step up that role.”
Trudel is wrapping up her tour of Europe and will be home in mid-May — just in time for the national semifinals and finals, slated to be held at Nickerson Field.
“Every time you talk to her she’s saying, ‘You better get to that Final Four because I want to be there,” Miller said. “She’s dying to see us play.”
Getting there won’t be easy, but with Trudel’s help, the Terriers know exactly what they need to do to make that final leap.
“We’re going win on playing with everything we’ve got and playing solid,” Lewis said, ever mindful of the writing on her arms — its message that talent can only take the team so far. “We’re not going to win on heart.”
