Vivi McHugh is a standout midfielder from the ADVNC North Bay & NDP 2026 team, committed to playing at Washington & Lee University, starting next Fall.
Vivi grew up playing lacrosse from a very young age. Her dad, Josh McHugh, played lacrosse at Yale. He started Vivi and her older brother Finn (ADVNC Alum and current player for Cal Berkeley) playing lacrosse pretty much as soon as they could walk.
Vivi in the car with her dad, Josh outside Gillette Stadium after watching Yale beat Duke in the 2018 National Championship Game. They took a cross-country redeye flight to Massachusetts.
“My dad kept playing for fun after college for the Marin Lacrosse Club, and I would stand on the sideline at his games,” Vivi said. “Then I started doing All West Lacrosse (which became ADVNC North Bay) and going to the Lax & Bowl Camps when I was really young. Going to the Lax & Bowl camps was so fun. That’s a core memory for me.”
“Matt Ogelsby (who started All West Lacrosse) was able to inspire a love for the game in young kids in a phenomenally effective way,” Josh McHugh said. “I remember both Finn and Vivi coming home from those camps, and they were just jumping up and down telling me about their day. They were so happy and excited. I was friends with Matt through lacrosse, going back to High School, so it was really extra fun to see that.”
“Even though Josh never coached Vivi’s teams, he would sit with her and break down game situations and strategy, even when she was very little,” said Margaret Johnson, Vivi’s mom. “He had a way of explaining the game in kid-friendly terms that both she and her brother could really understand.”
Vivi played a variety of other sports, including basketball, volleyball and soccer. But lacrosse was always in her and her family’s DNA, so to speak.
“I always liked how close the lacrosse community was,” said Vivi. “And learning to love the game along with my brother was great. He would always take me to the field with him to shoot and play together. He and my dad would sometimes make me get in the goal, with only a helmet on and shoot on me. We all had to take shifts playing goalie.”
“This lacrosse journey with Vivi and Finn has been phenomenal,” said Josh. “Everyone who has kids and wants them to fall in love with something that they love has this conundrum they have to deal with. Sometimes, as a parent, the harder you push the less likely it is that they will love it as much as you. But both my kids fell in love with lacrosse and still have that love today.”
Vivi played rec league lacrosse for the Riptide and Wolfpack, and later joined the Tenacity travel program. She played with Tenacity for years, until deciding to switch over to the ADVNC Program in 2023.
Vivi was playing defense for her former club team, but was playing midfield and attack at her school (St. Ignatius.). She decided she really wanted to focus on becoming better at midfield and attack, and felt like ADVNC was the best program for her to do that.
“It was hard to leave a great group of friends I had built over the years, but coming to ADVNC presented a new challenge that I really liked,” Vivi said. “I also decided I really wanted to play in college, and it felt like changing positions was the best way to do that. I came into ADVNC and started playing attack and that soon led me to playing almost exclusively midfield. I’ve stuck with midfield, and I love it. I love the ability to play both offense and defense.”
“Moving to ADVNC gave Vivi that opportunity to switch to the position she really wanted to play, and it restored her love for the game,” said Margaret. “She’s young for her grade and more than anything, she needed as many reps at midfield as she could get. ADVNC had a very high-frequency practice schedule, which was perfect. Her game improved so much and so fast during that first season.”
Vivi made the ADVNC North Bay ‘26 team, but was cut from the NDP team at first. “The only time those coaches had seen me play was at the NDP Tryouts,” Vivi said. “So when I didn’t make the team, I reached out to the coaches and told them how much I wanted to play for NDP. They gave me the opportunity to be evaluated more thoroughly at the first Fall Tournament in Santa Barbara. So that was a lot of pressure. I came out of that tournament, and got a text from the coach that I had been chosen for the NDP team. The experience was super nerve wracking, but ended up being very gratifying. I had gone out of my comfort zone, which is something that I’ve had to do a lot. Throughout my journey, I’ve had to learn how to advocate for myself.”
Vivi’s dad said that she frequently chooses the more challenging of two paths in sports and academics, often against his advice. Vivi said she chose to focus more on lacrosse than soccer as she got older, mainly because she knew she would have to work harder to compete at a higher level in lacrosse.
Sometimes the harder path has been a choice, sometimes it’s forced upon her.
Vivi was cut from the St. Ignatius varsity team as a sophomore, when several of her peers made the cut. “That was really hard,” Vivi said. “It was at that point that I made the decision that I really wanted to play in college. And within that, I knew I had to work a lot harder to get better. It would’ve been easy to say, playing lacrosse in college isn’t my calling, and this isn’t for me. But that turned into a great opportunity for me to play a lot more on the JV team. I became a captain and I got so much better.”
“It was devastating for her to not make varsity her sophomore year,” Josh said. “But it turned out to be the best thing for her. She played pretty much all of every game on the JV. The offense sort of ran through her, which isn’t an experience she would have had on the varsity. Then, almost at the same time, she made ADVNC NDP and got to go up against really challenging national lacrosse talent. So it was a huge year of growth and development for her. She went from being someone who plays lacrosse, to a very serious lacrosse player.”
Vivi and her parents credit ADVNC and their coaching staff for helping guide Vivi through all of that, and then quickly into the college recruiting process. “Coach Flo (Alicia Florin) kept telling Vivi that she believed she could and should play in college,” said Margaret. “That made a huge difference. It gave Vivi the motivation to train more between practices and get extra coaching, and to take nutrition and weight training much more seriously.”
“Coach Flo really has helped me grow as a player in a number of ways,” Vivi said. “And Coach Brooke Eubanks (ADVNC Girls Director) helped me reach out to college coaches, and I think her insight was really helpful for me. My head coach at S.I., MK McDonough and our offensive coach, Caroline Cummings have been both very helpful and supportive in my development as well.”
“Brooke Eubanks has been really helpful,” said Josh. “Having been a head coach at Cal, she has all the knowledge about college recruiting. She’s been on both sides of the process, and she was able to really help us feel like we were doing the right things. She definitely brought a degree of calmness to the process that was super reassuring.”
“When Coach Brooke came aboard the ADVNC Program, her experience and ability to give us a college coach’s perspective on where Vivi stood really helped us navigate the recruiting process without going insane,” said Margaret. “Brooke was so responsive and thorough in answering any questions we had.”
On September 1st of Vivi’s junior year, a few Division I coaches reached out. But the schools didn’t feel like great fits academically and culturally, so Vivi started focusing on DIII schools.
“Last Fall was the most stressful point of this entire journey, because on top of going to high school,” Vivi said, "I was also flying to the East Coast almost every weekend for prospect days, clinics and camps.”
Last November, Washington & Lee coaches watched the NDP 2026 team go undefeated at the Prime Time Showcase in Maryland. A few days later, W&L’s coaches emailed Vivian to set up a phone call. The call went well, and W&L took its place among a small handful of NESCAC schools at the top of Vivi’s list.
“Then, during spring break of last year, my high school team went to New Jersey to play several great teams. At the beginning of that trip, I made my first visit down to Washington & Lee and played in front of their coaches,” Vivi said. “I immediately loved it. The campus is so beautiful, and I loved all the coaches and players.”
Unfortunately, Vivi had pinched a nerve during the cross-country flight, and felt that she turned in a sub-par performance at the W&L clinic (the following day, the nerve issue kept her out of the first game of her high school trip). But she stayed in touch with the W&L coaches, and played in front of them twice more - once at a Lacrosse Masters event and finally at W&L’s June prospect day..
Several other schools - all located in New England - were also communicating regularly with Vivi, but as June progressed she found herself thinking more and more about W&L’s warm, welcoming campus tucked into the Shenandoah Valley between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountain ranges.
“W&L is a place where I could see myself beyond just lacrosse and it really became my top choice,” Vivi said.
The entire process was challenging for Vivi and her parents. “It was not a cakewalk, not a vacation at all,” Josh said. “There were so many ups and downs and as a player, you never really know what coaches are watching you and whether they're seeing your good plays or your bad plays. There’s so much of mentally trying to interpret signals coming from various coaches, that psychologically, it’s very difficult.”
Vivi waving the W&L flag after she committed.
On July 1st, following that second campus visit, where she played well in front of their coaches, W&L offered Vivi a spot on their team and she accepted.
“The fact that she was resilient enough psychologically to be able to go through all that time of not knowing what would happen and hoping that what she wanted would happen, was very impressive,” Josh said.
Vivi’s mom is from North Carolina and attended the University of North Carolina, and the family has vacationed in Bald Head Island, NC for many years. “I think the Southern aspect of W&L definitely had an impact on Vivi,” Margaret said. “I think that’s part of why the school became her top choice. For me, being Southern and having raised our kids on the West Coast, I’m so happy she’s going to experience college at a great Southern school. I feel good about her being in a place that’s so beautiful.”
Vivi in her Rosie the Riveter costume for Halloween.
“I’m proud that she got recruited and is going to an excellent college, but what I’m really proud of is her resilience along the way. With all the ups and downs, and navigating what was a huge grind mentally, makes me very proud,” said Josh.
“I feel like she earned this,” said Margaret. “That’s what makes me proud. She had a lot of setbacks along the way, but she’s tough and resilient and she didn’t give up. She persevered and made it happen. I always think back to a photo from one Halloween where Vivi went as Rosie the Riveter, and that’s how I think of her .. she can do it!”
With the process now behind her, Vivi has this advice for young players who aspire to play in college: “It’s really about finding your love for the game - and realizing you’re going to have to work for it. My experience wasn’t so easy. I didn’t have a direct path. I didn’t always know what was going to come next.. Just find enjoyment in the game, and in doing the work to get better.”