By John Niswander
Senior Writer
The Washington College men’s lacrosse team enjoyed an undefeated week, going 2-0 on the road in Centennial Conference games against Ursinus and McDaniel colleges.
“I think the season has gone well so far. Guys are playing hard and getting better every day,” Head Coach Jeff Shirk said.
The Shoremen had to rally from an early 7-2 deficit in order to overcome Ursinus on Wednesday, March 28 and eventually prevail, winning 13-12.
“It is all about believing in the guy to your left and the guy to your right. At no point in the game did I believe we would lose, and I do not think any of my fellow seniors and teammates did either,” said senior Tim Hickey.
Junior Trey Ritter scored a career high four goals in the comeback victory.
Senior Tyler Powers scored three goals, senior Peter Jacobs scored two goals to go along with two assists, junior Charlie Walker scored one goal and added three assists, junior Casey Grieves scored two goals, and junior Nick Boyles scored one goal to go along with two assists.
“Morale heading into McDaniel is high as you might expect, as we had not beaten Ursinus since 2014,” Walker said.
WC dominated McDaniel from start to finish, outscoring the Green Terror in three of the four quarters, for a 16-8 victory.
“There are no easy games for the rest of the season, as every in-conference game is a battle, so we needed to be ready to go off of the opening whistle,” Hickey said.
The Shoremen were able to start fast and jump out to an early 7-0 lead after one quarter of play.
Grieves finished with a career high 10 points, scoring a career-tying six goals and setting a new career high with four assists.
WC won 17 face-offs while McDaniel won just eight.
Senior Skylar Clark went 14-20 on face-offs for the Shoremen.
WC outshot McDaniel 45-36 and held a 35-30 advantage in ground balls.
Shirk is looking forward to his team building upon games like last week for the rest of the season.
“Our biggest focus right now is to improve our consistency. The times we have struggled this season have not been because of ability but rather a lack of consistency with fundamentals and decision making. The guys understand that and have done a great job working hard to improve in this area,” he said.
This weekend, on Saturday, April 7, the Shoremen will celebrate their senior day against Muhlenberg at home in a game scheduled to start at 5 p.m.