Charlottesville, Virginia, is as much Southern charm as it is college town, infused with a humidity-drenched hipness that attracts students worldwide. The city is steeped in history, the former home of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and its origins can be spotted on the facades of its buildings, with sturdy white pillars and sprawling front porches—the trademarks of late-1700s Southern architecture.
Named after the motherland’s Queen Charlotte, the settlement was formed within Albemarle County in 1762 along a trade route called Three Notch’d Road that connected Richmond to the Great Valley. Unlike many early towns, it lay slightly inland, away from the estuaries and river runoffs on which plantations of the time relied. Hugged by the Rivanna River, a tributary of the James, Charlottesville grew in a ten-mile chunk just west of the Southwest Mountains. Soon, a courthouse was built on a hillside overlooking Three Notch’d, and businesses began cropping up nearby—taverns, tailors, a gunsmith, and a jeweler. The heart of the town lay not along Charlottesville’s main drag, but rather just above it, next to the 1803-built courthouse. But as the early 1800s rolled by, the development began slowly to shift from so-called Court Square back to the trade route. First, there were houses. Next came the businesses. As the decades passed, Three Notch’d Road morphed into present-day Main Street.
Thomas Jefferson, the colonial revolutionary and former United States president who by then was at the end of his accomplished career, saw the town as a perfect spot for higher-minded academics, but he envisioned the University of Virginia as having a separate identity from the rest of Charlottesville. He picked a site atop a small hill about a mile from the town center and, in 1819, founded his Academical Village, as he famously called it. There, daily life was to be infused with shared learning. Faculty would live in upstairs quarters of stately pavilions; downstairs, there would be classrooms. He envisioned ten pavilions, each assigned its own subject and serving as home to the professor who taught it. While other universities placed a chapel at its heart, Jefferson placed a library, one built with a dome reminiscent of Rome’s Pantheon, which, according to the university, was symbolic of the enlightened human mind. Jefferson considered true enlightenment so unattainable that he declined to call uppermost class members “seniors.” Rather, they were dubbed “fourth years”—a tradition that continues today.
Jefferson envisioned a university that adhered to a student-policed honor system, much like the one he had written in 1779 for his alma mater, the College of William & Mary. The idea was simple: Students agreed to act honorably, promising not to lie, cheat, or steal, or they would be subjected to the harshest of academic sanctions—expulsion. Jefferson believed in self-government, both on campus and off. In fact, one of UVA’s main objectives was to produce leaders for a self-governing people.
In March 1825, the university officially welcomed its first batch of students, a class of sixty-eight. The institution was the first nonsectarian university in the country, and the first to allow students to choose elective courses. Jefferson, himself an architect, writer, inventor, and horticulturalist, put his many interests and talents to use by planning the curriculum and recruiting the faculty from all over the world. He designed the Village as a green space hugged by academic and residential buildings with gardens mixed throughout. The Pantheon-inspired Rotunda is regal and elegant, with perfect wood floors and ornate pillars encircling the dome room. As if its appearance weren’t quieting enough, those who speak inside are greeted with a stately echo that inspires one to hush in reverence.
Jefferson got to enjoy his creation for a year, regularly hosting events at his Monticello plantation manor, located a few miles from downtown. By the time he died on July 4, 1826—the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence signing (and, in a famous coincidence, the same day John Adams, the United States’ second president, died)—he had declared the university his greatest achievement. (Monticello, too, still stands as a designated historical site just outside of city limits, and its image has appeared on the back of U.S. nickels since 1938, save for a brief hiatus between 2004 and 2005. Monticello also appeared on the reverse of the long-discontinued two-dollar bill.)
Charlottesville continued expanding, and, in 1850, welcomed the Virginia Central Railroad (first called the Louisa Railroad, and later called Chesapeake and Ohio) as its first railway. Its tracks cut through the south end of town, below Main Street. By decade’s end, it connected with the Shenandoah Valley by cutting through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The new line allowed for a boom in shipping as goods and raw materials could more directly reach and pass through Charlottesville. In 1863, with the introduction of the Southern Railroad, the face of the area changed. The crossing railways divided the town into quadrants, with the university in its southwest portion, while the downtown lay northeast.
As shipping expanded, Charlottesville rooted itself as a full-fledged city, holding its first mayoral election in 1854. Its expansion briefly stalled during the Civil War, when many young men were sent into battle. The city itself fared better than many in the conflict, though canal locks were destroyed and buildings burned in Scottsville to its south. The only battle fought in Charlottesville was the Skirmish at Rio Hill, in which Brigadier General George Custer led thousands of Union solders toward the city on February 26, 1864. It was a decoy, meant to distract Confederate soldiers from separate efforts to free prisoners of war that were being held about seventy miles to the southeast in Richmond. The skirmish did not end well for Custer: He was disoriented by an incidental artillery explosion and chased out of town by opportunistic Confederate troops. Custer got his revenge the next year, when he occupied the town for three days in March. In April 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered in the Battle of Appomattox courthouse, and Charlottesville was spared the blaze that had already engulfed many of its Confederate brothers.
Today, nods to that history still stand. Statues of Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are displayed in Charlottesville’s public squares. Most noticeably, though, are the buildings that remain, the majestic brick-and-plaster structures that whisper reminders of the country’s origins, struggles, and potential. James Monroe’s Ashlawn-Highland and James Madison’s Montpelier continue to draw millions of tourists each year.
But the city offers more than history lessons. In 2004, Charlottesville was ranked the best place to live in the United States by Cities Ranked and Rated, a book by Bert Sperling and Peter Sander. The authors weighed cost of living, climate, and quality of life. Similar honors have been bestowed by other publications for decades: Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine ranked it the fourth-best place to live in the country in 2009; the same year, Forbes Magazine declared it the eleventh-best town to find a job; Farmers Insurance has rated it in the top twenty safest mid-sized cities in the United States; even the AARP ranked it one of the top ten healthiest places to retire in 2008. As of 2007, the city had about 41,000 residents, according to a census update. Statistically, Charlottesville is a safe place to live. From 2007–2009, fewer than one hundred aggravated assaults were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which releases annual statistics on cities nationwide. In 2009, property crimes had crept slightly higher than the year before (from twenty-three to thirty-five), and burglaries rose from seventy-nine to eighty-eight, but the increases were modest. The city’s biggest problem historically has been rape: In 2009, 247 were reported. Murders and manslaughter are exceptionally rare, with fewer than a handful a year. None reported in 2009.
Though the university continues to be a huge employer and revenue stream, the area is also drawing attention for its respectable wine industry. The Monticello Wine Trail declares itself the “birthplace of American wine,” and the area’s nearly yearlong humidity typically helps lock grape-pleasing moisture in the soil.
Incoming University of Virginia freshmen are routinely reminded of the university’s history and prestige. It’s no small feat to be accepted at UVA, especially for students coming from out-of-state high schools. In recent years, the college has accepted between twenty and twenty-five percent of its out-of-state applicants (compared to more than a forty percent acceptance rate for Virginia residents). In analyzing its incoming class of 2014, university officials said that the “middle 50 percent scored between 1300 and a 1480 on the reading and math portions of the SAT,” according to the Cavalier Daily. “The majority of these students—93.8 percent—were also in the top 10 percent of their high school classes.”
And, predictably, the academics are tough to beat: U.S. News & World Report ranked UVA second in “best public universities” in 2011 (tied with UCLA), and it’s tied for twenty-fifth when looking at both public and private national universities. Its McIntire School of Commerce is ranked fifth in the nation; its law school, tenth; and its English department, tenth. The University of Virginia Medical Center is one of fifteen major teaching hospitals ranked in the nation’s top one hundred, according to Thomson Reuters’ “100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks” study.
In short, UVA students are expected to be among the best in the country—and they know it.
Once settled in to campus life, students ready to shed their high school personas seem to gravitate toward the city’s downtown mall, a quaint pedestrian-only stretch dotted with more than 120 shops and thirty restaurants, based on a city-released count. Many eateries offer outdoor seating, making the mall both people-and pet-friendly. The stretch even has a movie theater and pavilion for outdoor concerts from spring to fall.
Yeardley had been eyeing the University of Virginia since childhood. It was the only college in her sights, and its down-home appeal differed from her small-town upbringing in the best possible ways. Teenagers in Cockeysville largely relied on the nearby Hunt Valley Towne Centre for outings. The outdoor mall boasted a slew of higher-end restaurants, a bookstore, a movie theater and a sporting goods store with a well-stocked lacrosse section. At night, the area teemed with teens—until, that is, curfew set in and youngsters were required an adult escort. In Charlottesville, the fun was spread out citywide. From her 14th Street apartment smack dab in The Corner—a seven-block cluster of restaurants, university bookstores, and bars—Yeardley could walk to grab a burger from Mellow Mushroom, some Vietnamese from Lemongrass, or a beer from Boylan Heights. Boylan Heights boasts burger fare with a twist, and is a popular place for students—athletes especially—to kick back with a beer or gather for post-class revelry.
Chaney Kent, who owned the Corner Market on University Avenue, told a reporter that Yeardley stopped by a few times each week to buy a twelve-ounce can of Diet Coke. The store was a block and a half from her apartment.
“She couldn’t be nicer, more pleasant, outgoing,” Kent recalled. “When a girl has a name like ‘Love,’ you don’t forget.”
George Huguely had also set his sights on Virginia. Considered one of Landon’s premiere lacrosse players, he was a natural fit there, both aggressive and agile. His roots in Chevy Chase no doubt made his transition to Charlottesville different than Yeardley’s. His town was more consolidated, with a downtown dotted by quirky venues such as American City Diner, a twenty-four-hour soda fountain–style joint that aired nightly film classics like Niagara and Dr. Strangelove. Huguely’s hometown felt upscale but down-to-earth, as though its inhabitants were from older money that they enjoyed spending on good times. Certainly Chevy Chase was more similar to Charlottesville than Cockeysville; Chevy Chase was a mix of laid-back mom-and-pop stores that made college shopping so eclectic. Cockeysville, on the other hand, relied largely on upscale chain outlets.
Despite differences in their upbringings, on paper, Yeardley and George seemed far more alike than not. As they each wrapped up careers at single-sex private high schools, they continued their immersion in lacrosse culture—one inherently married to privilege and pedigree. The sport, of Native American origin, is today an expensive one to play. Though the sport is similar in rules to soccer, players must invest in far more than just cleats and a ball. A typical lacrosse setup calls for a stick (both shaft and head), shoulder pads, rib pads, arm guards, slash guards, gloves, mouth guard, and either eye protection or full-on helmet. Depending on the make and style, each component could easily cost upward of $200. After the gear, there is the traveling. Love and Huguely routinely traveled throughout high school and college, both to play and to watch other teams in action.
The sport required vigorous training from both. Though lacrosse isn’t known as one of the country’s most popular sports, it’s definitely gaining ground, and lacrosse aficionados say its players must possess strength, power, speed, agility, and endurance in spades. Scientific studies indicate that the average lacrosse player must have the aerobic capacities of basketball and football players matched with hefty muscle mass—high bodyweight but low body fat—to endure aggressive physical contact. Thus, a lacrosse player might appear in size similar to a hockey or football player, but his body fat is typically lower.
When training, most lacrosse players focus on developing explosive power and endurance. Training calls for lifting lower-weight loads with more repetitions and faster movements. Unlike with other strength training, explosive power training doesn’t require athletes to perform to exhaustion, but rather a typical power session would call for an athlete to lift up to forty percent of his lifting capacity, then stop his repetitions shy of exhaustion. Players are told to rest between two and five minutes between sets, with the goal of performing between three and five sets per session. Many UVA athletes hit the gym up to five times a week.
Speed and agility drills are crucial in lacrosse training as well. For speed, athletes are encouraged to work on “rolling starts,” or sprints that begin as jogs, then pick up the pace about halfway through the drill. These are done on flat land, as well as up-and downhill to really push the athlete’s endurance. In agility drills, players are sometimes told to weave between a series of cones, turn around, then sprint back. The exercise mirrors the dodging and darting players have to do while passing their competitors on the field in pursuit of the ball.
Because lacrosse calls for such sudden bursts of speed and power, players’ muscles are flooded with lactic acid. Lactate tolerance training helps athletes tolerate higher lactate levels, allowing them to recover more quickly from those successive bursts. Shuttle runs—where an athlete springs about ten yards, then sharply turns and springs back—are typical for such training. Athletes typically rest for just thirty seconds between sprints, then cool down with a two-minute walk after wrapping up several sets.
But lacrosse—nicknamed lax—is set apart from other sports by more than how its athletes work up their sweat. It’s a complicated intersection of privilege, heritage, and pride.
Journalist Jamie Stiehm for years lived among lacrosse lovers and wrote about the “close-knit, privileged lacrosse culture” in a piece published the week Yeardley died.
“As a former reporter at the Baltimore Sun who lived near a lacrosse field and museum, I am familiar with the intense devotion to this sport,” she wrote. “Art, books, the theater: All are pretty much dead between March and May. Believe me when I tell you that in these circles, lacrosse is very nearly the only thing—you go to a game every weekend, home or away, including some far-off place like Providence or Ithaca.”
Parents are as immersed in the youth lacrosse scene as the children. Players with natural ability become town heroes. Their names are spread from one lacrosse hotbed to the next. They’re scouted as youths by college coaches.
“In college lax, the spring [schedule] becomes the main event of the season, with parents travelling to home and away games, having picnics and tailgate parties—reinforcing the sense that there is nothing more important going on than lacrosse in their lives,” Stiehm said in an interview.
“It’s a very old-moneyed culture. It was for men for decades, and then girls got into the game…It almost by definition excludes people who don’t have the means or the money to send their kids to private clubs or buy the expensive equipment. Usually it’s a private school thing. It has gates all around it.”
Stiehm, who worked for the Sun for ten years, mostly covering city news and general-assignment stories, found herself invested in the sport on April 18, 1998, when she was sent to the Brooklandville home of a nineteen-year-old high school lacrosse player who had committed suicide the previous night.
Alexander “Alec” Schweizer was an honor student and star player at St. Paul’s School. As starting goalie on the school’s team, he had been recruited to attend Syracuse University in New York. Newspapers typically don’t cover suicides, but Schweizer’s was a “society death,” Stiehm recalled. When she arrived at his upscale home, some 300 people had gathered in mourning. They talked openly about the young man’s aspirations and talents, and the Sun ran Stiehm’s piece in its Sunday edition.
More than a decade later, as Stiehm learned of Yeardley Love’s death, some of the lessons she had gleaned in her temporary immersion in the lacrosse culture came rushing back. The column she wrote for Politics Daily was starkly titled: “Yeardley Love Slaying: Is Lacrosse’s Close Culture Complicit?” Stiehm, now a journalist in Washington D.C., offered a resounding “yes” as the answer.
“This young woman was clearly being tormented, harassed, and abused, but because he belonged to a club that protects their own, she was ultimately a victim of that,” Stiehm later said. “They let her die in plain view. They ignored what was in front of them. And she didn’t bring it out into the open.”
As she wrote in her column: “If the entire lacrosse culture around Love had activated to protect her from a threat of violence, even if it came from someone from posh Chevy Chase, then she would be alive today.”
The piece outraged some readers, who sent Stiehm angry e-mails calling her a terrible person who, as an outsider, had no right to opine about the inner workings of lacrosse.
“Some of the comments were screams of pain,” Stiehm later said. “It was fury, but a little bit of guilt was at play, too.”
For a lacrosse-loving college student, the University of Virginia had natural appeal. The Virginia Cavaliers, also called the Wahoos or ’Hoos for short, had won six national lacrosse titles for men and three for women. In 2006, the year Yeardley and George graduated high school and headed for Charlottesville, the men’s team won its fourth NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship, defeating the University of Massachusetts in the title game. The record audience of nearly 50,000 made it the first lacrosse crowd to surpass the attendance of the men’s Final Four basketball championship. The Cavaliers were on fire, finishing the season with a perfect 17–0 record. Huguely, that year an All-American player, was expected to be a valuable midfielder, both muscular and capable of running the full length of the field many times per game. The midfielder’s job is strategic at its core.
Yeardley was ecstatic when she learned she was accepted to her uncle’s alma mater, her neighbors told reporters. In the fall of 2006, she packed up her belongings and drove the mountainous 172 miles to her new home—ready for her life to begin among the dogwoods and white oaks that canopied the campus. But while she was perhaps exactly the type of well-rounded and eager-to-learn student Jefferson had envisioned, surely her fate was not one he would have wished for in his academic Xanadu.