Women’s Lax Opens With Big Win

By Tim Marcin
Elm Sports Editor

You couldn’t ask for a better beginning to a season. It is always nice to dominate a game, but to do so in the first game of the year is truly impressive. If the women’s lacrosse team had any rust, it didn’t show as they beat St. Joseph’s College of Long Island 14-7 this past Monday, Feb. 18. What looks to be a promising year for the Shorewomen began just as planned—with a notch in the win column.

By all accounts it was a career day for sophomore midfielder Emily Hubley. She scored five goals, amassed six points, caused four turnovers, picked up four ground balls and won four draw controls—all career highs. She converted on 71 percent of shots, scoring five times on just seven attempts.

Just as it was a hot start for Hubley, the Shorewomen started hot as a unit. They scored the first three goals of the game and never looked back, keeping a lead for the entirety of the matchup. Perhaps the best goal of the game was the seventh. It came when Hubley streaked up the field after winning a draw control and fired a pass to senior midfielder Mollie Shipley. Shipley had the presence of mind to simply re-direct the ball with a quick swipe into the back of the net to put Washington College up 5-2. Despite the great effort however, the first half ended relatively close, with the score at 6-4.

It was the second half that saw WC clearly establish itself as the better team. After a few goals back and forth, the Shorewomen rattled off six unanswered goals to open up a 13-7 lead. This was down in large part by the efforts of Hubley and senior attack Corrine Ziccardi. Hubley scored three of the six in the run while Ziccardi assisted on three of the goals. Ziccardi had a career-high and game-best seven points, scoring three times and assisting on four goals.

“It’s a game of runs” is a common phrase in basketball and it applied to lacrosse for the Shorewomen on Monday. They were able to put together the six-goal spurt in a little over ten minutes. It was that run that sealed the victory. When the Golden Eagles finally broke through and scored their seventh goal, it was relatively meaningless. As if a final message to St. Joseph’s, Ziccardi scored the final goal of the game with just six seconds. There was no doubt as to who was the better team, and who would get the last word.

The team stats justify the final score as well. WC led in just about every major category. They had 33 shots to St. Joseph’s 23, picked up 12 ground balls to the Golden Eagles 11 and cleared 83 percent of their opportunities (19-for-23) compared to 62 percent (18-for-29).

Clearly it was the kind of beginning teams dream of. Expectations are high for a team that went 10-6 last season and returned quite a few key players. Next on the schedule is home game against Rowan on March 2 at 4 p.m. The Shorewomen narrowly beat Rowan 13-12 in 2012, so it promises to be a good matchup.

WC will look to carry the momentum of the big first win through the long gap between games. If their performance in the second half of their matchup with St. Joseph’s is any indication, the Shorewomen should be pretty hard to beat after a little break.

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