HUNTINGDON, Pa. - The Juniata Women's Lacrosse team hosted the campus' first Yards for Yeardley event on April 24th and was blown away by the support and engagement of the campus community.
The team has felt the encouragement of the JC family all spring as they went undefeated in club competition in preparation for their first season as a varsity program next year, but could not help but be impressed by the turnout for this event. Students, athletic teams, faculty, staff, and administrators all participated.
On May 3rd, 2010 Yeardley Love, then a senior lacrosse player at the University of Virginia, was beaten to death by her ex-boyfriend. Founded by the Love family, the One Love Foundation honors the memory of Yeardley by working with young people across the country to raise awareness about the warning signs of abuse and activate communities to work to change the statistics around relationship violence. In 2015, the collegiate lacrosse community started the Yards for Yeardley campaign to show support for One Love's work building awareness of relationship violence on college campuses.
The Women's Lacrosse team set a goal of one million yards in one day as a way to help in that effort. The Juniata Community was more than up to the challenge - walking, running, biking, and swimming its way to nearly two and a half million yards before 6PM – 2,452,010 to be exact.
To learn more about Yeardley's story and the work of the One Love Foundation, visit www.joinonelove.org. To learn more about the many efforts to educate and empower students at Juniata, follow the Juniata College Office for the Prevention of Interpersonal Violence on Facebook @prevention.resources and Twitter @juniatacares.