When Cathy Reese took over the Maryland women's lacrosse program eight years ago, she wanted her players to have the same kind of experience she had as a Terps player.
Of course she wanted them to win national championships, but Reese, who grew up in Howard County and played at Mount Hebron, also wanted them to be able to play before family and friends.
"Having gone to school in Maryland and played at Maryland, I think there's something really special about being able to represent the University of Maryland for your college career," said Reese, a two-time All-American who played on four national championship teams.
"We have such great talent in the state of Maryland that it's nice to be able to keep them in the state, keep them close to home, where they can have all their friends and fans come and watch them. It just seems natural. For me, Maryland was 30 minutes away from my house, and my parents were able to come to every game."
When Reese returned to College Park for the 2007 season, after three years of coaching at Denver, she made local recruiting a priority.
As her defending national champion and top-seeded Terps head into Friday night's NCAA Division I tournament semifinal against fourth-seeded Syracuse at PPL Park in Chester, Pa., their 34-player roster includes 20 from Maryland.
The Terps have 19 players from the Baltimore metro area, including the past four Baltimore Sun All-Metro Players of the Year: Brooke Griffin (South River), Taylor Cummings (McDonogh), Zoe Stukenberg (Marriotts Ridge) and Megan Whittle (McDonogh), the team's top four scorers. Alice Mercer (Century) and Casey Pepperman (McDonogh) start on defense, and attacker Kristen Lamon (St. Mary's) is first off the bench.
McDonogh coach and M&D Lacrosse Club founder Chris Robinson has seen interest in the Terps skyrocket in recent years. The No. 1 high school team in the country for six straight years, McDonogh has four former players on Reese's team and four more committed, including younger sisters Brindi Griffin and Kelsey Cummings.
"In the '90s, we saw a lot of Maryland players go to Carolina, Duke, Virginia and get away from home. Maryland had a lot of New York kids and Australians on their great teams. There weren't many local kids on those teams, and Cathy's made a huge change with her philosophy and kind of put up a fence around the state of Maryland," said Robinson, who coached Reese as an assistant at Mount Hebron.
When his players return from recruiting visits to Maryland, Robinson said, they're not talking about the Terps' tradition and their 12 national championships. They're talking about Reese and her assistant coaches, Lauri Kenis and former Tewaaraton Award winner Caitlyn (McFadden) Phipps, who played at Notre Dame Prep and then Maryland.
Taylor Cummings and Glenelg goalie Megan Taylor, who will join the Terps in the fall, said that was true for them.
Just about every major program courted Cummings, the nation's No. 1 recruit in her high school class and last year's Tewaaraton Award winner. She wanted to go "far away," however, and even considered Stanford until she visited Maryland the summer before her junior year.
"I took my visit to Maryland, and everything changed," Cummings said. "You walk in, and Cathy lights up a room. She makes you feel like you're the most important person in the room and she tells you how badly she wants you, and she's not just blowing smoke to make you feel good. Combine that with the assistant coaches and staff, and you find your home."
Taylor, the Baltimore area's top goalie, felt the same way before she committed to the Terps in September of her sophomore year.
"The coaches are awesome," she said. "They give you hugs and they make you feel welcome. They were so sweet when I tore my ACL [in the fall]. They kept on texting me to see how I was doing. From the beginning, I thought this is a really friendly atmosphere, and it feels like family."
Taylor also was impressed that Griffin and goalie Alex Fitzpatrick, who have suffered anterior cruciate ligament tears during their careers, kept in touch, offering advice and encouragement during her rehabilitation.
Like Cummings, Taylor initially wanted to go far away for college, but when her brother Alex (Glenelg) played at Salisbury, the whole family went to his home games just a couple hours away.
"That's when I realized I wanted to be close, and with Maryland, how can you say no?" Taylor said.
Maryland's location gives Reese and her staff a leg up on the competition for local recruits, some of the best in the nation. They can identify young talent in club ball and even see local recruits play other sports in high school. Cummings and Taylor said they liked that Reese and Kenis came to see them play other sports.
Two other coaches in the NCAA semifinals, second-seeded North Carolina's Jenny Levy (Roland Park) and third-seeded Duke's Kerstin Kimel (Maryland), have recruited many top players out of Maryland, but they're not getting them the way they used to. The Tar Heels have just six players from the Baltimore area; the Blue Devils have two.
"We're competing for those kids, but I'm not really sure how much we are competing for them," Levy said. "I think Maryland's deep into them way before we even get on the scene, just because of the culture in the state."
Levy and Kimel also noted that with recruiting starting at an earlier age, and some players committing as early as their freshman year, it's hard to counter Maryland's staff from a distance.
"The challenge for us is on multiple levels to recruit a top-level Maryland kid," Levy said. "I think most of the top talent out of Maryland is headed to Maryland, and that's OK. … Part of our challenge for the past 20 years has been growing and building the sport in the state of North Carolina, so we can have those same options one day, too. We're far from that, but we're getting closer."
Kimel said Reese has to recruit earlier because other programs know how strong the talent is in Maryland and how important it is to make inroads here. Florida has been especially successful recently luring Baltimore players to its warm climate.
Cheaper in-state tuition also can be an incentive, said former Terps All-American Courtney Connor, who played at Loch Raven. A fully funded women's lacrosse program has 12 full scholarships to spread around, leaving some of the financial burden on a player's family.
Connor, a women's lacrosse analyst for the Big Ten Nework and ESPN, foresees a time when most top-level women's lacrosse players will stay close to home, wherever they live.
The Big Ten Conference's investment in women's lacrosse and Southern California's rise to Division I varsity competition in 2013 have brought the game to more big-time athletic departments willing to provide the financial support necessary to bid for title contention, Connor said. That has piqued interest in other major conferences, such as the Pacific-12 Conference, which has five schools that sponsor women's lacrosse, and the Southeastern Conference, which has two.
"Michigan and Rutgers — these are big programs, and it goes to show the level of dollars each of these schools is spending on their teams," Connor said. "I expect a team like Rutgers to have all of those New Jersey kids stay at home. I think it's going to turn into more of that type of recruiting style, where Cathy's going to continue to get all the Maryland players that she wants and everybody's going to get the leftovers. That's how it currently is at big, top-five programs. At UNC — Syracuse, too — a kid is just waiting for that phone call to stay in state and play."