Final four double dose for Terps fans
NCAA’s move of women’s tourney from N. Carolina provides rare opportunity
University of Maryland alum Marcos Bronfman was going to have a tough choice.
The Terrapin Club vice president typically attends the men’s and women’s lacrosse final four games because the NCAA had hosted the tournaments in the same city at stadiums near each other on alternating days.
This year, however, the women’s tournament was scheduled for Cary, N.C., while the men’s championship was in Foxborough, Mass. Should Maryland’s squads advance, as they had for the past three years and did again for this weekend, Bronfman didn’t know where he’d travel.
But the NCAA announced in September that it was removing seven championship events from North Carolina in opposition to the controversial law restricting transgender bathroom access and LGBT civil rights. So, the women’s national semifinal and title games were relocated to Gillette Stadium, sharing a venue with the men for the first time and sparing Terps fans the angst of choosing which No. 1 seed to watch.
“The committee really just felt like it offered a unique opportunity to try the joint model with the men,” said Mary Berdo, the NCAA Division I associate director of championships and alliances. “It’s something that’s been talked about for a while, and this obviously really presented itself in a unique situation where we needed to