O'Reilly latest Lion to join Georgetown

by TOM UTESCHER

At this time last year, Springside School's high-scoring Zan Morley signed a scholarship agreement to play lacrosse at Georgetown University. Over the summer, 2003 Springside grad Maggie Koch transferred into Georgetown from Drexel University, where she started in goal during her freshman season last spring.

Early this month, a third Lion lacrosser became a Hoya when current senior Bunny O'Reilly signed up with the Washington, D.C. school. One of the national elite in the sport, Georgetown reached the NCAA semifinals last May before falling to eventual national champion Virginia.

An Honorable Mention All-American as a junior, O'Reilly plays third home on the attack, and performs a major role in the Lions' midfield transitions, as well. Last year she registered 57 goals and 56 assists for Springside, and she has 100 goals and 86 assists for her career.

"She can score at will, but she always looks for other players, too," points out Lions coach Brooke Fritz. "Although she's very fast, she would rather pass the ball than just run it down, and she makes the people around her better."

O'Reilly made official recruiting visits to Dartmouth, Harvard, and lastly, Georgetown. For some time, Dartmouth was the frontrunner in her selection sweepstakes, but she relates "When I went down to Georgetown for my visit, it just felt right. I love the coaches and I want to play at the highest level I can, and Georgetown is competing for the national championship every year."

What attracted college coaches to O'Reilly, Fritz says, was "her speed and the fact that she's a lefthander, which is relatively rare for an attacker. She also uses her right hand well, though, and a lot of teams don't pick up right away on the fact that she's a lefty.

"All of the college coaches saw her as kind of a low-home player," the Lions' mentor continues. "She has a deceiving shot; she can shoot it from a pretty low-percentage angle and a lot of times it slips in behind the goalie's head."

A solid student, O'Reilly enjoys English, and her current favorite is an AP course exploring the works of writers such as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Joseph Conrad. She's not ready to decide on a college major just yet, though.

"The fact that Georgetown's such an international community means there are a lot of academic opportunities," she observes. "That was something that interested me and, also, being in a Catholic school appeals to me."

The middle child between two brothers, O'Reilly attended Gwynedd Mercy Elementary School, where she began to play lacrosse in the sixth grade. Before that, her spring seasons had been spent on the cinder track where, not surprisingly, she was a sprinter. She switched over to Springside in the seventh grade and was playing varsity lacrosse as a freshman, even scoring the winning goal in several of the Lions' victories. She remembers looking up to Ali Pearson, who would be named the outstanding athlete of the Girls Inter-Ac League as a senior in 2003.

"Ali really helped me out," she recalls. "She was always dishing out assists and she kind of controlled the offense. I admired the way she played."

O'Reilly was a starter for the Lions' soccer team as well, and in the winter she took to the squash court.

In lacrosse, Springside's Fritz recalls, "Bunny really made great strides going from her sophomore to junior year. She went to a lot of camps, played a lot of club lacrosse. She got taller and she also became more solid so she didn't shy away from contact. Mentally, she really started to "get it;" she started to see the field well and put the game together."

At the end of her sophomore season, she was selected to play on the Upper Atlantic region third team at the U.S. Lacrosse women's national tournament.

"Playing at a high level, and having to get used to people you hadn't played with before was very beneficial," the Springsider says.

At last year's national tourney O'Reilly made the U.A. first team, whose games always draw college recruiters to the sidelines. It paid off for the Springside standout, who has secured a place with a Georgetown squad that has made the NCAA tournament in each of the last seven years and has been national runner-up twice.

Former assistant Ricky Freid has become head coach of the Hoyas' program, replacing Flourtown native Kim Simons, who retired at the end of the 2004 season to accept an administrative post at the school.

"They seem to be a very unselfish team, and I like that style of play," O'Reilly notes. "Zan and Maggie love it down there, and I just got a good feeling about it on my visit."