By CAMERON SMITH

csmith@wiltonvillager.com

Today, Megan Orr is heading back down that path, only this time she's found a change of scenery.

Within the month Orr will start classes for her final year at Holy Cross, the Worcester, Mass. Cathlolic University where she has helped elevate the status of a once fledgling women's lacrosse program. A 21 year-old, she has already started three collegiate seasons for the Crusaders, and returns as the two-time defending Patriot League Goalkeeper of the Year.

"Hopefully we're going to win the Patriot League again," Orr said of her goals for her senior year. "I think we have a good team coming back, and I think this was a major year for Holy Cross women's lacrosse. We won the Patriot League, made the NCAA tournament, all for the first time ever. We can't settle for that, we have to see how far we can do."

That attitude is a big part of the reason why Orr's teammates and coaches say she's had a profound effect on the team. But it's easy to qualify Orr's success and at Holy Cross; just look at the numbers. The Crusaders were 7-9 in their first season under Head Coach Stephanie Pavlick. In 2004, Orr's first season between the pipes, the team improved by a game to 8-9. Then, with a year under Orr's belt [and two under Pavlick], the team finished with a winning record at 10-9, reaching the Patriot League Conference Championship game [where it lost to Colgate]. It was just the team's third winning season in 13 years.

Or consider her personal statistics. Last year Orr set two Holy Cross school records with 14 wins and a whopping 235 saves. She also led the entire nation in save percentage, turning back 57.2 percent of the shots she faced. Entering her senior year she ranks eighth in career saves with 635.

For Orr, the real breakout came last year, in 2006. After being named team captain as only a junior, Orr led the Crusaders to a 14-7 record and a Patriot League title. Holy Cross was undefeated in Patriot League play [6-0] and reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history.

"As a team, winning the Patriot League and beating Colgate for the first time was a definite highlight," Orr said. "After the game it was such a great, great feeling. Even going to NCAA's for the first time, getting our own private jet and VIP treatment. That's such a main goal for every team, and to get that far is such an accomplishment."

The team was eliminated by eventual finalist Duke in the tournament's first round, but players and coaches could look back on clear and present progress for a school which competes nationally with modest resources and enrollment.

"She was our captain last year," Pavlick said. "We put her in that role because we wanted to challenger her more. She loves to challenge herself, but we put more pressure on her to be a leader as well as a goalie. She stepped up to that more than we could have asked for.

"She's the heart of the defense and an integral part of the team's success. She's complementary of everyone, and she always wants to figure out what happens. [She] just wants to make sure that she's making her team better every day."

That trend is hardly news for the Wilton fans who saw Orr perfect her craft between the pipes through a rather unusual progression. Orr started in goal for the Warriors before moving out of the pressure-packed role to play as a defender. As a player in the field, Orr was able to see how her teammates worked within different defensive sets.

Then, a year later, she returned to her starting spot in goal. Renewed success wasn't far behind, and she left for Holy Cross without a thought of moving back into the field.

The transition from goalie to defender back to goalie is a rare one within the sport. While goalies are moved on to the field with some measure of regularity — see former Wilton boy's goalie Bill Curry's emergence as a defenseman at Ohio State — moving back to their original slot in the cage is a novel concept.

But Pavlick said she was convinced that three-part transformation has made a significant difference in Orr's development as a top goal keeper.

"I think what has set her aside was obviously her experience at Wilton," Pavlick said. "Being a goalie, then a field player and then a goalie, it made her a better player. She got to see both sides of what a player is going through, what to expect from a defensive unit and what to look for as a field player and as a goalie. The way she is, she always wants to work an extra hour before and after practice. She can never get enough, and she understands everything better in that time [because of her time in the field]."

Orr says that her dual experiences on the field will only become more important as women's lacrosse becomes more innovative and athletic.

"Especially coaching now, as I did some this past summer, I tell the goalies to work on their stick skills, this and that," she said. "A goalie can be used as another defender out there. Having played on the field, it's easier for me to direct the field. It was only a year, but I still have that experience to guide me, helps with my talking, to be more active.

"I think that's changing with a lot of goalies, they're being more active and being another defender out there."

According to Pavlick and the Holy Cross coaching staff, that's fine as long as it doesn't change the way Orr approaches the game. From the time she was first discovered at the Connecticut Lacrosse Futures Game, Orr has put herself through the same pre-game ritual: First she listens to calming music, often of a Hawaiian bent. That in itself is a stark contrast to the aggressive punk and rap usually pumped into locker rooms as players prep for game time.

Then, in another break from traditionally uber-superstitious goalies, she tries to avoid any other routines. While she takes part in a variety of pre-game procedures designed by her teammates to protect their luck, Orr said that the harder part of preparing for a game was eliminating a focus on the ever-present cold that whips through Holy Cross's hilltop campus.

"There's a lot of stupid little things that can get in your head, so I try not to have many set routines," she said. "I try to get my head out of the cold, too. I remember our first game against UMass there was about an inch of snow on the turf. We're normally outside. Other than January, where we might go to the field house, we're outside. It's cold."

Cold might be an apt description for some of Orr's saves in recent years. Her increased stops have coincided with what Pavlick credits as increased maturity; whereas Orr would become frustrated or frazzled when scored upon as a freshman, her coaches say that she now becomes more proactive and responsive to letting in goals.

"I think she's matured a lot since she got here," Pavlick said. "When she started as a freshman she used to beat herself up a lot when she got scored on. And when that happens, sometimes you turn around and one goal has turned into six or seven. Now, when a shot gets by Megan is the first person to say, 'Hey, let's figure out what happened. Let's fix it.'"

For Orr, that lesson of moving beyond mistakes has become so integral to her approach that it now leads her own coaching.

"Whenever I'm coaching now, I say don't take yourself out of the game, just think you'll get the next one," she said of instructing young lacrosse goalies. "It is hard to get past, and you're always upset with yourself. But you have to get over it.

"In college, you know the goalies that you can take out of their game because they're head cases, and you really use that to your advantage. You want to keep your head straight and keep in game as much as you can. You don't want to be one of the head cases."

So, what's next for Orr? She's quick to say that she's not sure, adding that a future coaching lacrosse wouldn't be a disappointing outcome. For now, she plans to continue enjoying life as a lacrosse captain, decorating the team locker rooms and buses with posters and flair of reckless abandon. And she'll hold the solace of living near two sisters in Boston, whom she said she visits often, and the comfort of a college community based almost totally around campus sports.

" It's pretty small," Orr said of Holy Cross. "It's like a big high school. And pretty much everyone's an athlete, so all the teams are friends. It's a great community to be a part of.

"With lacrosse getting more and more popular, it's so easy to check everyone out and see how they're doing. That alone is expanding the sport throughout the country."

It's also a nice trend because it allows one to closely follow the career the nation's finest women's lacrosse goalies, who just happens to be from Wilton.