2006 Cavaliers In Class of Their Own

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — On an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon in February 2006, Virginia hosted Stony Brook in a men’s lacrosse game at Klöckner Stadium. The Cavaliers had been NCAA semifinalists in 2005 and were loaded again, but late in the first quarter they led by only a single goal, at 3-2, and the Seawolves’ head coach liked the way the game was unfolding.

“I remember feeling, ‘OK, we're battling. We're going to hang in here,’” Lars Tiffany, who now leads the program at UVA, recalled this week. “And then it felt like I blinked and it was 10-2. I remember looking at the scoreboard again and going, ‘They already have 10?’ We certainly felt the wrath of a great lacrosse team that day.”

The final was 17-4, but Stony Brook had plenty of company that season. En route to the program’s fourth NCAA title—the third under head coach Dom Starsia—the Wahoos won all 17 games they played in 2006.

“For a full four quarters, no one could hang with us,” former UVA great Matt Ward said this week. “It just wasn’t going to happen.”

In a pivotal ACC game, No. 11 UVA hosts No. 3 North Carolina at noon Saturday, and a festive scene is expected at Klöckner Stadium. The 2006 Cavaliers will be honored at halftime Saturday, along with the 1986 team that won the ACC title and lost in overtime to UNC in the NCAA championship game.

“This is a really special moment,” said Tiffany, who has guided the Hoos to two NCAA titles (2019 and 2021).

🙌🏆 Excited to welcome back members of our 2006 national-championship team and 1986 ACC-championship team for Alumni Weekend!

To commemorate the 20th and 40th anniversaries of each championship, we will honor both teams at halftime of Saturday’s game against North Carolina. pic.twitter.com/IwNpsKfWSv

— Virginia Men's Lacrosse (@UVAMensLax) April 16, 2026

The 2006 Cavaliers rank among the most dominant teams in the history of college lacrosse. Their average margin of victory was 8.2 goals, and “those margins could have been way bigger,” said Ward, an attackman who totaled a team-high 67 points that season. “A lot of us didn't play a lot of fourth quarters in games.”

Ward, who received the Tewaaraton Award at season’s end, was one of the Cavaliers’ three captains in 2006, along with defenseman Mike Culver and short-stick defensive midfielder JJ Morrissey.

“I’ve never had a good team that didn't have really good internal leadership,” said Starsia, who added another NCAA title in 2011. “I do a lot of talking to teams and coaches, and I always talk about that. I say, ‘You want to know what the common thread is in all my best teams? Internal leadership.’ ”

Led by the captains, the 2006 team was unsurpassed in that area, Starsia said. “But it wasn't just those three guys. It was the whole team. I joke about how I didn’t have to do anything except get them to the game on time. Obviously it's more than that, but there was just going to be no denying those guys.”

The 2006 team, Starsia said, possessed “an uncommon combination of skills and athleticism, kind of up and down the lineup, And, again, just an uncommon focus.”

The captains and the rest of their recruiting class arrived on Grounds in 2002 for what would become an unforgettable journey.

“I would tell you that the four years that those guys spent [at UVA] were four of the most eventful seasons that we ever had,” Starsia said. “My personal feeling is I think everything that happened led to the next thing that happened, and I wouldn't change a thing. 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006—that was quite a ride.”

In 2003, the Cavaliers won the program’s third NCAA title, thanks in no small part to the heroics of goalie Tillman Johnson in Baltimore.

“We were on a team that had a lot of senior leadership and didn't really have to do much as freshmen,” Ward said. “I think we did a lot on the field, but in terms of leadership and motivating, we kind of just followed the example that was being shown to us by the seniors on the team. I would say sophomore year, we went in the exact opposite direction. Not only were we not performing on the field, off the field it wasn't great.”

In 2004, Virginia finished 5-8 and missed the NCAA tournament for first time under Starsia, who’d succeeded Jim Adams as head coach after the 1992 season.

The Cavaliers returned to form in 2005, advancing to the NCAA semifinals in Philadelphia. Two wins from another NCAA title, they suffered a heart-wrenching semifinal loss to Johns Hopkins. The Blue Jays scored with 1.4 seconds left in the fourth quarter to force overtime and then prevailed in the extra period at Lincoln Financial Field.

Twenty-one years later, “I don't look back on that Hopkins game with anything other than love and admiration,” said Ward, an analyst on ESPN lacrosse broadcasts.

“It was obviously at the time devastating, but I’ve probably watched that game more than any other game from a highlight perspective,” Ward said, “because, A, it was a great game and we were playing a great team, but also I understood the importance, and understand the importance, of learning from your failures. We came up just short, but it ultimately motivated us to approach our senior year, our last year in Charlottesville, with more conviction, more dedication and a work ethic that I don't think we would have had otherwise.”

Morrissey agreed. He said this week that he knew the Hoos “would win in ‘06 as we were going through the handshake line in ‘05 with Hopkins. I just knew we had to have that moment in order to get where we got in ‘06. I do think we're probably the greatest college lacrosse team of all time, and without ‘05—the lessons we learned there and the trial by fire we had—maybe ’06 doesn't turn out the way it did. It doesn't sharpen our swords like it did.”

Starsia said: “Some teams would walk away from a game like that and a weekend like that and think, ‘Wow, that was pretty good.’ That was probably the most exciting game ever played, that semifinal game. But for those guys, the 2006 guys, they clearly were pissed. And so they started getting after it immediately.”

Culver said this week that the 2005 loss to Hopkins and the way Virginia responded the following season haven’t “stopped informing my life and the way I handle challenges and adversity and opportunities. Those two years, I think, were really formative and really essential.”

Two days after UVA’s semifinal loss, Hopkins defeated Duke for the NCAA title. “That Monday, a bunch of the guys were watching the game at our house,” Culver said. “I just couldn't stomach watching it, so I went on a big run up [Observatory] Hill. I was like, ‘All right, I want to make sure I am prepared to be playing on Memorial Day this time next year.’ ”

Starsia and his assistant coaches, Marc Van Arsdale and Hannon Wright, entered the 2006 season with an extraordinarily deep and talented roster. Eight UVA players would end up as All-Americans that year: Culver, Ward and midfielder Kyle Dixon on the first team; attackman Ben Rubeor and midfielders Matt Poskay and Drew Thompson on the second team; and defenseman Ricky Smith and goalie Kip Turner on the third team.

Other standouts in ‘06 included attackmen Danny Glading and Garrett Billings, short-stick defensive midfielders Morrissey and Will Barrow, defenseman Matt Kelly, long-stick middie Mike Timms and faceoff specialist Charlie Glazer.

Stony Brook also faced a formidable Hostra team that season, but UVA had “another level of athleticism and skill,” Tiffany said. “I remember thinking, ‘Where’s the weakness here, Dom? Where's the weak link?’ ”

Virginia had only one close game in 2006, and that was at Princeton on March 12. The Cavaliers trailed 4-1 midway through the second quarter but rallied to edge the Tigers 7-6.

“Their goalie stood on his head,” Starsia said. “I don't remember it being as hairy as a one-goal game often can be, but it was nip and tuck until the very end.”

The Hoos powered through the NCAA tournament. They opened with a 14-10 win over Notre Dame at Klöckner Stadium and then, in Towson, Md., demolished Georgetown 20-8 in the quarterfinals. That sent the top-seeded Cavaliers to Lincoln Financial Field for the second straight year, and this time they left Philly with the championship trophy.

In the semifinals, Virginia handled Syracuse 17-10. That set up a date with unseeded UMass for the NCAA title. The Hoos were heavily favored to win, but they led by only one at halftime, and the Minutemen scored the first goal of the third quarter to make it 5-5.

The Cavaliers were unfazed. “Honestly, I don't remember getting nerves at all,” Ward said. “I think we were excited. It was like, ‘We're in the thick of it, in the thick of battle,’ and you focus on that.”

A slashing penalty on UMass led to a UVA goal, and the rout was on. The final was 15-7.

“One mistake and we were always going to jump on that, no matter who we were playing,” Ward said. “It was just relentless. If the door ever opened, we barged through, and we knew it was a matter of time before that was going to happen.”

Culver said: “I’m slightly embarrassed every time people put us in the category of one of the best teams of all time, but looking at our record and our performance, yeah, we should be in that conversation.”

In 2006, “every single person on the team was going in the same direction," Ward said. "What was so unique about that team was there was no noise from any player, ever, other than in the positive direction.”

Their Hall of Fame head coach set the standard that season, the captains said, and the players followed his lead.

“Dom is such a great example as a human being,” Morrissey said. “We grew through him with the championship [in 2003], missing the playoffs [in ‘04], a devastating loss in the semis [in ’05]. We watched him react to all of those. He was leading us to water as leaders the whole way. He may not want to take credit, but he was the one who was setting the example for us and showing us how to do it with our teammates."

Starsia still lives in Charlottesville, but the players from the 2006 team have scattered. Of the captains, Ward is in the Chicago area, where he’s a partner with Northwestern Mutual’s Beyond Financial Advisors; Morrissey is dean of student engagement and well-being at Millbrook School in New York; and Culver is founder and CEO of 1Row, a consulting firm in Boston.

Culver is also a volunteer assistant coach on the men’s lacrosse team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“I’ve loved it. I haven’t had this much fun, frankly, since ’06,” he said, laughing.

Culver has taken the lead in organizing the 2006 reunion in Charlottesville, and he says about three dozen players from that team are coming back for the UNC game.

“I can’t believe it’s been 20 years,” Culver said. “It’s going to be fun seeing all these knuckleheads.”

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