Virginia Lacrosse Alumni Network (VLAN) Supports the Virginia Lacrosse Programs and the University of Virginia

MALVERN, Pa., May 14 /PRNewswire/ -- The Virginia Lacrosse Alumni Network (VLAN) is an independent group formed of women's and men's lacrosse program alumni that have competed at the intercollegiate level and received undergraduate degrees from the University of Virginia. Our alumni group today has over 1,110 members and spans graduate years from 1939 forward on the men's side and 1977 forward on the women's side.

The VLAN group serves to support the University of Virginia and the women's and men's lacrosse programs as well as the career preparedness of rising lacrosse student-athletes. VLAN has members living in 41 states and 7 foreign countries and our chosen fields of endeavor range across all professional pursuits.

We are profoundly saddened by the loss of Yeardley Reynolds Love on May 3, 2010. We mourn this tragic passing from within the Virginia lacrosse family and we continue our grieving process.

We extend our sincerest heartfelt condolences toward Sharon Love and Lexie Love and the extended Love family. The Love family will forever be a member of the Virginia lacrosse family and we will serve to honor the memory of Yeardley through our efforts with all the student-athletes that will progress through the Virginia lacrosse programs in the years to come.

The Yeardley Reynolds Love Endowed Scholarship is being sponsored by VLAN and is raising proceeds to fund an annual scholarship within the Virginia women's lacrosse program in perpetuity, to honor and cherish the life and spirit of Yeardley Love. While this scholarship is only a small measure of our expression of loss, this endowed scholarship will honor Yeardley's memory within our women's lacrosse program and the Virginia lacrosse family as a whole, for the generations to come. We will never forget.

While we are grieving and working to support the Love family through this most difficult time, the Virginia Lacrosse Alumni Network is also extremely focused toward our 2010 student-athletes, coaches and support-personnel currently practicing, training and preparing to compete within the 2010 NCAA lacrosse national championship tournaments, in the honor and memory of Yeardley Love.

We applaud the efforts of our coaches, led by Julie Myers and Dom Starsia and their staffs. We wholeheartedly support Julie and Dom for their leadership and steady hand during this unprecedented period of grieving and for the way these coaches have gracefully faced every challenging day with their student-athletes best interests at heart.

The Virginia Lacrosse Alumni Network will not stand in silence as the lives and reputations of our coaches, student-athletes and support-personnel as well as the University of Virginia as a whole, and at its core, the great game of lacrosse are all called into question. We have realized through the last ten days, that toward many of the questions that have been asked there will simply not be any answers. Life is precious and we have lost a precious life from within our ranks.

We are working to learn to live with the questions we will not be able to answer and we are working very diligently to ensure that resources are deployed and that lessons can be learned so education can occur and so that these tragic circumstances will not be repeated.

As our Virginia lacrosse programs prepare to enter the 2010 NCAA lacrosse national championship tournaments, with the blessing of Sharon and Lexie Love and with our team's intent to honor Yeardley Love's memory we want to be emphatic and clear: We support our University of Virginia lacrosse coaches, led by Julie Myers and Dom Starsia. We support the University of Virginia athletic department led by Director of Athletics Craig Littlepage. We support the University of Virginia as a whole and its administration led by President John Casteen. We support the core values of the game of lacrosse and the life lessons this game has taught us and the life skills this game has ingrained in each of us.

The Virginia lacrosse family has a thirty-three year legacy of excellence on the women's side and a seventy-one year legacy of excellence on the men's side. We are a very cohesive family. We have suffered a tragedy and we are taking care of each other.

In the persons of the 2010 Virginia women's and men's lacrosse student-athletes, who are by extension family to us, we will all now rise up and in the spirit of competition, honor our fallen family member, Yeardley Love.

We will never forget Yeardley Love and we will ensure that our entire Virginia lacrosse family and the wider University of Virginia community evolves upwards from this loss; that resources are deployed and that professional capabilities are committed to ensure the health and safety of our student-athletes and wider University of Virginia community.

Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia in 1819 on an ideal that an academical village could unite and inspire teachers and students alike in learning and growing and in giving back. We continue to support this model and we together fully commit to do our part to make sure the University and all its ideals carry forward with honor, forever.

We mourn the loss of Yeardley Reynolds Love. We support the Virginia lacrosse programs and the University of Virginia.

SOURCE Virginia Lacrosse Alumni Network