Although their season came to an abrupt end on Saturday after the first round of the NCAA tournament against Syracuse, this season has still been one of unparalleled success for the Georgetown women’s lacrosse team, as it captured both the Big East regular season and conference tournament titles for the first time in program history, all en route to the No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament.

What makes the Hoyas’ accomplishments particularly impressive is the lackluster way their season started, as their record stood at a mere 3-5 after a crushing overtime loss to Princeton at the end of March. The four prior losses came against teams that were then ranked No. 1 through No. 4 in national polls – the Tigers were ranked No. 19 at the time of their victory over the Blue and Gray.

Nevertheless, the five losses were devastating for the Hoyas, who had opened the 2010 season ranked No.7 nationally and had aspirations to make some serious noise in the postseason.

Lesser teams might have buckled under the mounting pressure of salvaging a season that looking increasingly hopeless and mediocre, but instead the Hoyas’ loss to the relatively low-ranked Tigers energized the team and kicked off the 10-game winning streak that came to an end on Saturday. In retrospect, Head Coach Ricky Fried thinks that the Princeton loss was a painful but necessary reminder of how tough lacrosse can be on a game-to-game basis.

“I think the turning point of the season was the Princeton game – losing that game [gave a] sense of urgency to a number of people. … Winning that game might not have ignited the fire or sense of urgency [that it did],” he said. “It’s never good to lose a game, [but that game] changed our mentality, changed our mindset. … That allowed us to go on the streak that we went on.”

Even in the wake of the crushing double-overtime loss, Fried still believed in his team’s ability and resisted the temptation to make wholesale changes in the lineup just for the sake of shaking things up.

“We improved on the defensive end of the field as a group significantly, but I think the biggest place that we improved on was our approach to the game,” Fried reflected. “We had a lot of people step in and continue to grind and do the little things that we’re capable of doing – so it [was] more of a mental approach to [improving] than anything physical or tactical.”

Just days after the Princeton game, the Blue and Gray had a chance to show the rest of the country that they had indeed learned from their early-season difficulties when they hosted No. 14 Notre Dame in a conference clash that both teams knew, even early in the conference schedule, would have huge implications in the Big East title race.

Despite blowing early 3-0 and 6-3 leads, respectively, Georgetown kept scrapping and pulled out a hard-fought 12-10 victory at MultiSport Facility, which did a lot to convince the team that they were indeed capable of the high standards many pundits had set for them at the beginning of the year.

“We were up big, [but] they came back,” Fried said of his team’s victory against the Fighting Irish. “We could have mentally packed it in and said `here we go again,’ but instead we kept grinding it out and came out with that victory.”

After a relatively easy five-game stretch in which the Hoyas steadily avoided any embarrassing losses, they closed the season with two difficult games with Loyola (Md.) and archrival Syracuse, two teams that, like Notre Dame, had legitimate aspirations for the Big East crown.

For the first three quarters of the game against Loyola, the Blue and Gray looked eerily like the team that had squandered chance after chance against Princeton and Duke, and had gotten blown out by Maryland and UNC earlier in the year. The No. 13 Greyhounds had a seven-goal lead with just over 17 minutes left. Much like their season, though, the Hoyas flipped a switch and came storming back to send the game to overtime, where senior midfielder Ashby Kaestner scored the game-winning goal after a late offside’s gaffe had nearly cost the Hoyas the game.

“Clearly the Loyola game was huge,” Fried said. “Being able to not play at [our] best for a period of time against a talented and competitive team … showed a lot of character.”

Georgetown bettered that impressive feat just a few days later when they travelled up to New York to face the Syracuse Orange in a clash that would determine the Big East regular-season title. With a gritty 10-9 road win over their archrivals, the Hoyas finished the regular season with a perfect 8-0 conference record and the top seed heading into the conference tournament.

The schedule didn’t get any easier from there, however, as Georgetown had to defeat Loyola and Syracuse again on the way to their first Big East tournament championship. This achievement is particularly noteworthy not only for the 10-game winning streak it extended, but also because the seniors on the team had found nothing but defeat in the title game in their first three years, including last year’s bitter loss to Notre Dame on home turf at MultiSport.

“To win the Big East championship … proves that we were able to focus on the right things and not focus on the past,” Fried said. “Give a lot of credit to the seniors and the captains of the team for keeping the team together. They’re responsible for the chemistry on the team and… keeping everybody positive and focused on the right things.”

Although the captains-Kaestner, senior attack Molly Ford and senior defender Jackie Proch- as well as the rest of the senior class have played their last game for the Blue and Gray, their impact will still be felt for years to come as the younger players on the team have now seen firsthand how to handle and lead in times of adversity.

“In the early part of the season I do think we focused on who we were playing and [thought] `wow they’re good, are we that good?'” Fried said. “Going through all that made us [decide] … `you know what, we’re that good but we have to prove it every day on the field.’ And that’s the direction to seniors took us.”

The future looks bright for the Georgetown women’s lacrosse team, and this year’s team not only built a sturdy foundation for the teams that will follow it but also served as a shining example of the rewards that can be reaped from gritty play and steady perseverance.