Maureen Duffy Is Westhampton Beach's Next Division I Lacrosse Product

“She’s the total package.”

That’s how Westhampton Beach varsity lacrosse coach Mary Bergmann describes Maureen Duffy. Over her six-year varsity career, the senior midfielder became fourth all time in season goals, and fifth all time in season points, proving that she is one of the most talented players in program history.

In addition to being a talented athlete, she’s also been a great teammate and leader, according to Bergmann. They are qualities Duffy has possessed since she was in middle school, and displayed both a maturity beyond her years, and an uncommon passion for and dedication to the sport.

That single-minded focus has paid off for Duffy, who was highly recruited by several top tier Division I programs and ultimately committed to her top choice, the University of Virginia, where she will join the team in the fall.

Bergmann remembers having Duffy in her health class when Duffy was a seventh-grader, and was impressed by her determination to make the varsity team at such a young age.

“She planned out the whole thing, what workouts she needed to do, the wall ball she needed to complete, and the sport specific training she needed to supplement with,” Bergmann said. “She worked to make that goal a reality.”

Helping her along the way were her parents, Christine and Bill Duffy, both former athletes themselves. Mr. Duffy, who played lacrosse at Cornell, was a particularly strong influence on Maureen, first putting a stick in her hands when she was just 5 years old. Maureen added that she inherited a fiercely competitive spirit from her mother, who ran track and field and played soccer. Maureen’s younger brother, Owen Duffy, 16, plays lacrosse at St. Anthony’s High School and is “kicking butt,” according to his sister, who said she is proud of him.

Duffy’s love affair with lacrosse was of the at-first-sight variety, she said, and it was a love her parents nurtured. Duffy laughed as she recalled a time when she and her brother were complaining that they didn’t have the crease lines demarcated around the goal in their backyard, so their mother went in the house, grabbed a sack of flour, and sprinkled a makeshift line around the goal for them.

Duffy became a star in the sport by doing what most athletes with Division I dreams do these days — play the sport on a year-round basis, from a young age, for both the school teams and PAL leagues, as well as elite travel teams, and also engage in intense physical fitness training.

Duffy has competed for the Yellow Jackets, one of the premier girls lacrosse travel teams, which attends tournaments throughout the northeast. She made that team when she was in third grade, and has been a member ever since, dedicating much of her time in the summer to playing for the squad.

Despite her laser focus on lacrosse, Duffy said she still saw value in competing in other sports, and has been on the Westhampton Beach cross country and track and field teams since she was in middle school. Duffy was part of the 4x400-meter indoor relay team that took home a silver medal when she was just a freshman in 2018.

Duffy has also made a commitment to her physical fitness, working out at Revolution Athletics, based in Bohemia, with trainers Justin Kull and Golden Okonu. During the summer, Duffy works out several days a week, from 6 to 8 a.m., and also consults with the trainers about her nutrition.

Duffy was certainly on the radar of college coaches from the time she was very young, but a rule change made by the NCAA when Duffy was in her first year on varsity prevented college coaches from contacting recruits until they were in their junior year. Duffy said she’s grateful for that, adding that she believed, like many others, that it can create a lot of pressure for highly sought after student-athletes like herself to make a commitment to a college at such a young age.

“When I got older, I knew more what I wanted, and I also have really improved since seventh grade,” she said.

The day the coaches were finally able to call her, the floodgates opened. Duffy started receiving calls and emails with offers at midnight, an experience that she described as “insane.” By then, UVA was firmly her top choice, but they did not contact her within that first hour, which she admitted was stressful — the anticipation, combined with sleep deprivation, led to some tears in the early morning hours, she said. When coaches from UVA finally did call her, she was on the phone with another coach and couldn’t take the call — something that happened two more times, before they were finally able to speak, and make it official. Duffy had Penn State, Florida, Stanford and John Hopkins on her list, but said once she took a visit to UVA, her top choice was clear.

“I felt like I fit in really well, and everyone looked so happy, I was like, I want to be here now,” she said. “It all fell into place. And my mom told me that you really have to love the school even without lacrosse, because if something happens and you can’t play, you still have to want to be there.”

Duffy officially committed to UVA at the end of September during her junior year, not knowing that she would lose her entire junior season to the pandemic.

She said losing her junior season was disappointing, but added that it taught her some valuable lessons.

“I got to work out every day and work on improving my own game,” she said. “And it taught me to value the [senior] season we’re having now. We have a game almost every other day, which can be exhausting, but every time I start thinking about that, I think about how it can be taken away so easily, and you really have the value the time you have.”

Bergmann has certainly valued the time she’s had with Duffy, and admitted she’s having a hard time accepting the fact that this is her last season.

“This is my eighth year here, and I met Maureen year one at summer camp,” she said. “I was impressed with her then and am still impressed with her now. She has grown so much and really has taken on the role of captain this year. It feels like she’s been on the team forever and it’s strange to even think about her not being on the team anymore.

“Maureen is going to do great things at UVA,” Bergmann added. “They are lucky to get a player like her who works every day to be better than she was the day before.”