The second-ranked UNC women’s lacrosse team came out Saturday afternoon for its ACC opener against Virginia with a “take-no-prisoners” mentality–evidenced by the Tar Heels’ 21-11 beatdown of the Cavaliers at Fetzer Field.

It was by far the highest-scoring performance of the young season for UNC (6-1, 1-0 ACC), which had previously reached 16 goals on three separate occasions so far in 2017.

Senior attacker Molly Hendrick tied her career-high for the second straight week with six goals and an assist in the game, as she continues to lead the Tar Heels in scoring this year with 24 goals to this point.

Marie McCool and Sammy Jo Tracy didn’t let Hendrick completely hijack the spotlight for herself, however, as they each added four goals apiece for UNC.

Fresh off her 300th career win last weekend, head coach Jenny Levy was more than pleased with how her team played against Virginia (2-4, 0-2 ACC)–which also happens to be her alma mater.

“Every time we play an ACC opponent, we have tremendous respect for them and we know it’s going to be a hard game,” Levy said. “Coming in, our focus as a team is to play for 60 minutes.

“We wanted to play together and we really wanted to try to be great teammates out there and try to connect on a different level than just playing the game,” the coach added. ‘And I thought we did that really well.”

UNC scored the game’s first five goals, was never threatened and defeated the Cavaliers in just about every major statistical category–including shots on goal (28-23), draw controls (19-14) and groundballs (15-13).

The Tar Heels will now face a short turnaround before their next game Tuesday at home against Elon, but appear to be playing at peak form as the season begins to heat up.

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