The first Saturday in May was Lacrosse Alumni Weekend at Brown and, among the old Bears cheering from the sidelines as their alma mater beat perennial power Princeton, 6-5, for a share of the Ivy League title, was the captain of the 1974 team, Dom Starsia.

Who also happens to be the highly successful coach of the University of Virginia Cavaliers.

"I have a deep affection for Brown," he said. "Mike Goldberger [Brown's director of athletics] is one of my closest friends. Lars Tiffany [Brown's coach] played for me, and was a two-time captain for me."

The emotional ties to Brown, and to Providence, remain strong for Starsia, even 16 years after he left to go to Charlottesville.

Professionally, it was an easy decision for him to leave Brown, even though he had been coaching the Bears for 10 years and had won two Ivy League titles. At Virginia, he knew he could compete for the national championship every year.

At a farewell party for Starsia in the summer of 1992, a friend told him that the good news about his taking the job at U.Va. was that he could go to the Final Four every year. The bad news was that, if he didn't get to the Final Four, people would want to know why.

It's a question Starsia hasn't had to answer very often. He's won three NCAA titles at Virginia -- the most recent in 2006, when his Cavaliers were a perfect 17-0 and beat Massachusetts by eight goals in the championship game.

He also has lost twice in the title game, and is back in the Final Four again this year -- for the 10th time in 16 seasons. Virginia, the No. 2 seed, will take on third-seeded Syracuse on Saturday at noon at Gillette Stadium in the opening semifinal game, followed at 2:30 by No. 1-ranked Duke against defending champion and No. 5 seed Johns Hopkins. The championship game will be played Monday afternoon at 1 in Foxboro.

That's the sort of success Starsia hoped for -- and that Cavaliers fans expected -- when he was lured to U.Va. from Brown following the retirement of longtime Cavs coach Jim Adams.

Emotionally, however, it was a difficult move to make.

Starsia had spent his entire adult life at Brown. He had built a family, and a career, in Providence.

Although he came to Brown to play football, he fell in love with lacrosse as a freshman -- "I played in the first game I ever saw," he said -- and developed into a two-time all-Ivy defenseman, helping the Bears win the league title as a junior in 1973.

The captain of the team as a senior, Starsia became an assistant coach under Cliff Stevenson after graduation. In 1983, he was named head coach of the Bears and, over the next decade, took the team to the NCAA tournament five times, including three straight appearances from 1990 through 1992. His 1991 team was undefeated during the regular season and ranked as high as second in the country.

But he felt he could do even better at Virginia.

"When I used to tell recruits the weather in places like Chapel Hill was no different than in Providence, I lied," he chuckled. "I decided I'd built enough character shoveling snow off the roof [of Olney-Margolies Athletic Center] so we could practice on the artificial turf.

"I had just turned 40 [in 1992]. I wasn't having a midlife crisis, but I was ready for another adventure, professionally, in a different setting."

Except that his wife, Kristin, didn't want to leave Providence.

"When I mentioned to her that Jim Adams was retiring, she said: 'I hope you'll be very happy.' The implication was clear that, if I was going to Charlottesville, she wasn't going with me."

Starsia knew it was going to take some convincing.

"We had deep ties to Providence," he said. "A lot of friends."

They also had four young children -- two in gifted and talented programs, two others in special education.

"When I talked with the people at Virginia," he recalled, "it wasn't just about lacrosse. It was about whether the move was right for my family. When I flew down for an interview, they insisted that Krissy come along with me. When we saw the schools our kids would be attending, we knew it would be a good situation."

Starsia didn't know a thing about lacrosse when he arrived at Brown in the fall of 1970 as a wide receiver. He played freshman football, then was convinced to come out for lacrosse by his roommate, Dave White, a Mohawk Indian.

The game was invented by Indians, who referred to it as "the little brother of war." A history major at Brown, Starsia became interested in that aspect of the game, as well.

"I fell in love with it as soon as I started playing," he said.

Although he also played varsity football for two more years, Starsia said he "kept a lacrosse stick in my locker. I'd sit there and throw a ball off the wall. The football coaches hated it."

It was clear that he preferred catching, throwing and running with a lacrosse ball to doing the same things with a football.

While Starsia never looked back after giving up football, he maintains close ties to Brown and Providence.

Those connections have benefited him in recruiting. When the Cavaliers won the NCAA championship in 2003, their star player was Chris Rotelli, whose father, Peter, played freshman lacrosse with Starsia. Chris, who had been a standout at Moses Brown, was not only voted Player of the Year in Division I, but also was named Male Athlete of the Year in the Atlantic Coast Conference -- the first Cavalier to win that award since basketball star Ralph Sampson. Ben Rubeor, one of the leading scorers this season for the Cavs, is the son of Bob Rubeor, who was a lacrosse teammate of Starsia's at Brown. What's more, the manager of the U.Va. lacrosse team this year is Jade White, who's the daughter of Dave White, Starsia's former roommate.

"I loved being at Brown." Starsia said. "But I was ready for a new chapter in my life. I wanted to compete for the Final Four every year."