NEW HAVEN, Conn. – As the Yale women's lacrosse team prepares for the 2020 season, the Bulldogs have announced that senior midfielder Vanessa Yu (Oyster Bay, N.Y.) will captain the team. She leads the Bulldogs into their 45^th varsity season and is the 10th Yale women's lacrosse captain from New York.
"I am incredibly honored and humbled by the opportunity to lead the team as captain," said Yu. "I feel especially grateful to play beside my teammates and to represent a team that has inspired me in many ways, on and off the lacrosse field." 
 
Erica Bamford, Yale's Joel E. Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach of Women's Lacrosse, looks forward to the 2020 season with Yu as captain.
 
"We could not be happier with the election of Vanessa Yu as captain of our 2019-2020 team," said Bamford. "She has garnered the respect and trust of her teammates by her selfless leadership, passion, and commitment to her teammates.  I am excited for the upcoming season under Vanessa's leadership."
The Bulldogs showed many signs of progress last year, setting the school record for draw controls (243) and finishing with the fourth-most assists (89) and points (277) in Yale history. They improved their goals-per-game average by 17 percent compared to the previous season.
 
Yu has already seen many signs this fall that the Bulldogs will build off the gains they made last year.
 
"Right off the bat, in practice and fall ball, our team has been playing with so much excitement and dedication," Yu said. "I am so impressed by our team's intensity fueled by our passion for the game, and I'm looking forward to help encourage and grow that excitement. Moving into our 2020 season, we're eager to continue to work hard, motivate one another, and push the limit on what we can achieve together."
 
Yu tied her career high with 15 games played and three starts last season, finishing with four goals and a career-high seven assists. She points to a game from the 2018 season -- a 16-15 overtime win against Harvard at Reese Stadium -- as the most memorable moment of her career so far.
 
"I will never forget the minutes leading up to our first win against Harvard in over seven years," Yu said. "We were tied in overtime and our coach had called a time-out. During our huddle, [2019 captain] Izzy Nixon told us to fight with everything we had like it was life or death. It was incredibly intense, and the victory embodied the effort and passion we put in together as a team."  
 
At Oyster Bay High School, Yu was team captain and honorable mention All-American in 2016. She was also valedictorian and President of the National Honor Society. Yu also played for Liberty Lacrosse, and for Team LI Metro at the US Lacrosse National Tournament in 2014 and 2015.
 
Yu's family has extensive Ivy League connections. Her sister, Michelle, plays for Dartmouth. Her mother and father graduated from Cornell, and her aunt and uncle graduated from Yale.
 
Yu and her sister represented the Hong Kong national lacrosse team in Berlin in 2018, part of a summer in which Yu also shadowed a plastic surgeon in New York and volunteered at Camp Kesem, a camp for children whose relatives have cancer.
 
Yu, who intends to go to medical school, spent last summer doing research in the Chun Lab at Yale's Cardiovascular Research Center. The lab is specifically focused on characterizing signaling pathways important in vascular homeostasis and in disease pathways such as Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. 
 
Yu is in Jonathan Edwards College at Yale.
 
Yale Women's Lacrosse Captains from New York
1985 Lucy Bernholz (Lloyds Neck, N.Y.)
1999 Alison Cole (Manhasset, N.Y.)
2000 Heather Bentley (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)
2003 Clarissa  Clarke (Huntington, N.Y.)
2004 Jenn Kessel (Northport, N.Y.)
2005 Kerry Docherty (Orchard Park, N.Y.)
2007 Lindsay Levin (Port Washington, N.Y.)
2013 Devon Rhodes (E. Northport, N.Y.)
2015 Kerri Fleishhacker (Manhasset, N.Y.)
2020 Vanessa Yu (Oyster Bay, N.Y.)