What started with three young women and one idea has morphed into hundreds of college lacrosse athletes rallying for One Love.
Today's collegiate lacrosse players were high school students when University of Virginia lacrosse player Yeardley Love was beaten to death by her ex-boyfriend just two weeks shy of her graduation. But whether they knew the 22-year-old well enough to call her "Yards," whether they came across her as a teammate at Maryland's Notre Dame Preparatory School or as a foe in the ACC, or whether they can simply identify with the goal-oriented athlete who wore No. 1 for her dream school, the lacrosse community is making a statement about the danger of relationship violence.
They have united to run 100 million and counting Yards for Yeardley. As 1,760 yards are in a mile, these teams have amassed more than 56,000 miles to raise awareness for a problem that affects 1 in 3 women and 1 in 5 college females, according to studies conducted for the U.S. Justice Department.
"She was older than me, but obviously I was someone going down the exact same path -- having the same goals and getting ready for the same college career," said Molly Erdle, a Boston College defender. "I didn't know her, but I remember thinking she was absolutely someone I could relate to."
Caroline Seats plays for Virginia, where Love's former locker is reserved for the player who most embodies her characteristics: compassion, team spirit and spunkiness among them.
"Our team is still very close to it, even though no one played with her," said Seats, whose sister, Sarah, was a Cavalier teammate of Yeardley's. "Now being a senior at UVA and reaching the end, I can't wrap my head around about how it happened."
Seats, along with her good buddy Covie Stanwick at Boston College and Erdle brainstormed the idea of Yards for Yeardley or each team running one million yards as part of preseason training to raise awareness for relationship violence.
Erdle didn't know anyone at Virginia, but Stanwick and Seats were high school foes. Stanwick played at Love's high school, Notre Dame, and Seats across town at Roland Park Country School, both near Cockeysville, Maryland, Love's hometown. The three thought Virginia and Boston College would be the lone schools to take part, and "maybe we'd expand it someday," Seats said.
Movement goes viral
They never dreamed more than 150 teams would join in -- from high schools to colleges, including Stanford, Colgate, Lehigh, Yale and Duke. Men's teams signed on, including High Point and Penn. Virginia women's soccer took part; the Georgetown field hockey team plans to add its support in the fall. Even a university in Birmingham, England, is in the mix.
"The guys texted me one night and asked me if we could do this, and I said, 'Absolutely,' " said Penn men's coach Mike Murphy. "We didn't do this to put it on our web site or for recognition. We did it because it was the right thing to do."
"We're so impressed with what they've done; it's all student-driven," said Katie Hood, today the CEO of the One Love Foundation, started just a month after the tragedy by Sharon and Lexie Love, Yeardley's mother and sister. "It's gone viral."
Check out the Twitter account @yards4yeards, a Facebook page by the same name, and an Instagram page with more than 2,500 followers.
Bringing attention to a bigger issue
Lacrosse players, who train heavily for the spring season over holiday break, each created their own system of tracking their million yards, broken up among team members. Duke's Emma Lazaroff paired with a friend from Boston College and ran the inclines of Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, carving Yeardley's name in the snow onstage. Freshman Tristan McGinley led the way for Virginia Tech, amassing 96,290 yards by herself. Virginia Commonwealth, which doesn't officially begin play until 2016, embraced the idea despite a roster of seven players -- roughly one third the size of most squads.
"Every yard brings more attention to the cause," said VCU Coach Tara Coyle. "No matter how little or how small, every person can make a difference."
"We had no idea it would turn out this way, but we couldn't be happier with the result," Stanwick said. "We really just wanted to emphasize the fact that relationship violence needs more attention."
Relationship violence was an issue too daunting to tackle when Sharon Love initially digested the news that Yeardley was left battered and bleeding on May 3, 2010, in her off-campus apartment at the hands of George Huguely, now serving 23 years for the murder.
But last summer the foundation's goals grew bigger, said Hood, who came on board in June. "It was Sharon who said in a kitchen brainstorming session, 'l want to do to relationship violence what MADD did for drunk driving. I want to stigmatize the offender and I want to empower the bystander to take away the keys.' "
Soon after, the foundation revealed the "Shatter the Silence" public service announcement campaign, designed to raise awareness and educate young adults about the risk factors and warning signs of relationship violence.
Stevenson University's Kathy Railey took that message to heart for this story. A head coach for a decade at the Division III school in Owings Mill, Maryland, which is about a 20-minute drive from where Yeardley grew up, Railey has largely kept silent about her own experience with relationship violence at Gettysburg College in the '80s. Through Stevenson, she has been an enthusiastic supporter of the One Love Foundation, raising thousands of dollars for the cause via ticket sale proceeds, goal-a-thons and raffles. Her team is nearing completion of Yards for Yeardley.
But what Railey hasn't revealed until now is this. "I could have been Yeardley."
Railey describes being a confident and physically strong two-sport student-athlete at Gettysburg who captained both the field hockey and lacrosse teams. As a junior she fell in love with "a great guy," she said, "except when he drank."
What started as his punching walls escalated into his trashing her room and on occasion, pushing her around. Finally, one night he walked the half-mile to her off-campus apartment, convinced her to let him in and pulled out a 9-inch hunting knife.
"He came to kill me," she said. "He pushed me across the kitchen floor and then threw the knife at my head. Because I fell, it sailed over my head into the cabinets. I'll never forget that knife dropping down in slow motion into the kitchen sink."
She fled the apartment, and his fraternity brothers persuaded him to leave. His remorse the next day didn't sway her and by semester's end, he left school after failing out.
"It wrecked me for almost a decade after that," Railey said. "I didn't trust men. Victims aren't meek women. I think it would surprise the general public to know that that is not a characteristic of who a victim is in relationship violence. ... I hid from it for many years and can almost attribute what happened to Yeardley as a wakeup call."
While the foundation didn't intend it this way, Yards for Yeardley has become the ideal catalyst for "Escalation," a feature film-based workshop aimed at helping high school and college students end relationship violence. The film features a fairy tale beginning for a couple that disintegrates into controlling and violent behavior with a tragic ending. What sets the story apart is the friends of the pair reflecting on all the signs of violence they failed to connect. Filmed at Towson University, "Escalation" debuted on six college campuses already; the long-term goal is to push for it to be mandatory viewing for every college student in the nation, Hood said. A partnership between the foundation and the Baltimore Ravens has funded its rollout to Maryland high schools and colleges.
One Love also offers a danger assessment online survey and in appreciation to all the teams participating in Yards for Yeardley, will develop an app that will make tracking yards easier.
Tori Seitz and her Jacksonville University lacrosse teammates completed Yards for Yeardley and watched the film, taking part in focus groups afterward to generate feedback. They hosted a "share the love week" to raise awareness about relationship violence, setting up tables outside the cafeteria where they gave away One Love headbands to anyone who downloaded the One Love app. The app creates an action plan after deeming if a relationship is unsafe and provides advocate support 24/7 through an embedded live chat function.
"We received such positive feedback from piloting the video and our 'share the love' week that we are starting a One Love club on campus," Seitz said. "We are so happy to be part of a great organization and this national movement."
Erdle remains awestruck about how one idea among friends mushroomed into a phenomenon.
"It shows how a group of people who have a common similarity can band together for something great," she said. "It's cool that 99 percent of us in college lacrosse didn't know Yeardley, but we have connections through the sport we play. It draws out the best in everyone when uniting for something like One Love."