Acacia Walker-Weinstein was no stranger to the tears or hugs following women's lacrosse's national championship game. She experienced them openly after the 2017 iteration at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, and she felt the tears and hugs again in 2018 and 2019 at the games played at Stony Brook and Johns Hopkins. She knew there was an overall exhaustion that comes from playing in the emotional roller coaster of a national championship, but nothing could have prepared her for the different brand of feelings that flooded the 2021 game on Sunday.
Maybe that's because she was standing in the middle of Johnny Unitas Stadium as the head coach of a national champion, and the tears were for the celebration, not the consolation.