The last time Mae Marshall stood on Yeardley Love Field at Notre Dame Prep was last Thanksgiving weekend when she and fellow Maryland junior defender Olivia Rockstroh took part in an alumni game.

“We walked up together, and we were like, ‘This is so weird,’” Marshall recalled with a laugh.

Marshall and Rockstroh will make that walk again Wednesday when they and the No. 9 Terps women’s lacrosse team meet No. 11 Virginia at 6 p.m. The matchup — organized and broadcast by Corrigan Sports Enterprises — is designated as the One Love game in association with the One Love Foundation that honors the memory of the late Love, a Blazers graduate and Cockeysville resident who played for the Cavaliers before she was murdered in 2010 by her ex-boyfriend.

The game will be a homecoming for three Notre Dame Prep graduates: Marshall of Lutherville, Rockstroh of Phoenix and Virginia junior midfielder Finley Barger of Fallston. Marshall said all three have shared texts and Instagram stories about the buildup to Wednesday.

“It will mean a lot to us,” she said. “At NDP, there’s so many traditions and things revolving around Yeardley, especially for those of us on the lacrosse team. I think being a part of that for four years and being able to participate in this while we’re in college is going to be awesome for us.”

Steve Powers is banking on an awesome experience. The Notre Dame Prep athletic director quickly embraced the idea of the private school hosting a women’s college lacrosse game when he was contacted a year ago by Andy Biello, vice president of events at Corrigan Sports Enterprises.

“On something like this, I’m a yes-first guy, and then we’ll figure this out,” said Powers, a former goalkeeper for Maryland men’s soccer from 1983 to 1986 who played for the American Soccer League’s Maryland Bays and the Major Indoor Soccer League’s Baltimore Blast. “It might have been easy to say, ‘Our facilities can’t stand up to this,’ but I figured we can find a way to make this work for a number of reasons.”

Wednesday’s game is part of Corrigan Sports Enterprises’ College Lacrosse Live Series. Last year, the company arranged for men’s lacrosse games between Syracuse and Delaware at a private school in Chantilly, Virginia, Denver and Duke at Spalding in Severn, and Cornell and Notre Dame in Brookville, New York.

This spring, Corrigan Sports Enterprises coordinated men’s lacrosse matchups with Towson and Virginia on March 8 at the Kinkaid School in Houston, and Denver and Duke on March 22 at Highland Park High in Dallas, Texas. But Wednesday’s game will be the company’s first foray into women’s lacrosse, according to Joe Kerrigan, assistant marketing director for Corrigan Sports Enterprises.

Last year’s series raised between $9,000 and $10,000 for the HEADstrong Foundation that provides support to families affected by cancer. This year’s series has already generated more than $10,000 in donations for the One Love Foundation, Kerrigan said.

Although Maryand (9-3) and Virginia (9-4) were not initially scheduled to meet this spring and Notre Dame Prep has not hosted an in-season college athletic event, Kerrigan said all parties involved readily agreed to participate.

“The One Love component was the driving force of getting these two teams to play because it made the most sense,” he said. “And NDP has been all about it.”

Powers said the opportunity to partner with the One Love Foundation and pay tribute to Love overcame any hurdles.

“This is the school that Yeardley Love went to for her formative years,” he continued. “So we want to be part of that. If it was going to happen, I wanted it to be right here on our campus.”

Current Cavaliers and former Towson coach Sonia LaMonica echoed Powers’ sentiment, saying, “The fact that this is a One Love game and this is for Yeardley Love, that was why. That was the catalyst.”

Wednesday’s game is the second of a doubleheader, which will open with a matchup between the Blazers and Maryvale Prep — the latter of which is coached by Brian Reese, the husband of Terps coach Cathy Reese. With their daughter Cayden also a senior starter for the Lions, Cathy Reese did not consider the significance of her and her husband coaching on the same field.

“I haven’t really thought about it like that,” she said. “We’re just trying to figure out where our fans are going to park.”

The two teams were originally scheduled to play Tuesday at Maryvale Prep, but Powers said Maryvale Prep athletic director Telia Marks agreed to change the day and venue to bill the game as a doubleheader.

Notre Dame Prep is a suitable host for the game. A study conducted by Greg Dayton, a researcher from Pickerington, Ohio, showed that among NCAA Division I women’s sports rosters for the 2021-22 academic year, the Blazers led the state and ranked No. 12 nationally in producing 62 student-athletes. And all 16 seniors on the current lacrosse team will play in college next spring, Powers said.

“This kind of event showcases that for us,” he said.

While Notre Dame Prep held an offseason women’s lacrosse game between Navy and Northwestern in fall 2023 and an offseason women’s soccer game between Maryland and Delaware a year ago, hosting an in-season lacrosse game has presented logistical challenges for the school. With half of 2,000 tickets for the game already sold, Kerrigan said Corrigan Sports Enterprises is planning to install bleachers to accommodate fans, hire security and add netting for safety reasons.

Powers said school officials have arranged for fans to park their vehicles at Towson United Methodist Church and St. Thomas Church and take shuttles to the field if the 1,500 parking spots on campus are filled. Both teams will have access to their own gymnasiums, locker rooms and practice fields, and parents of players on the teams will have their own designated tailgate areas.

Despite a year-long planning process, the last several months have been a series of meetings for Notre Dame Prep officials. Asked if he was anxious about Wednesday’s doubleheader, Powers replied, “I’m nervous that everything goes off without a hitch. But I’m mostly excited to bring two great college women’s lacrosse programs to our campus. So the anxiousness coincides with an excitement to bring two storied franchises to campus. … We are eager to show what we can do.”

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