Josh Falcone – General Assignment Reporter
With the start of the season day’s way, the women’s lacrosse team is excited to get on the field and compete.
Head coach Maureen Spellman said the team has a positive outlook has they head into their first matchup Saturday against East Stroudsburg University.
“We are optimistic about kind of starting fresh and I am looking forward to seeing the freshman class that just came in, see how they perform,” Spellman said. “I’m optimistic because we only lost three seniors last year, which is huge. We have a big senior class of six girls. So I’m excited to see how this new group works together and it’s a brand new team, so we are definitely looking forward to starting fresh.”
Assistant coach Caitlin White, reiterated Spellman’s opinion that the team is eager to take the field.
“I think we are really excited, we have good expectations for them and the team as a whole, and individuals,” White said.
The constant barrage of snowstorms that the region has faced this winter has complicated the team’s offseason training, Spellman said, but this is an issue she believes the whole conference has faced.
“We have been working a lot in the offseason and with the snow on the field, we are in the same boat as a lot of the NE-10 teams, weather has definitely been an issue,” she said. “So we have been inside, in a gym really building stick skills, but we are excited to get back outside.”
Spellman who is in her first season as head coach of the women’s lacrosse team after spending last season as assistant coach with the Owls said the team, while extremely hopeful about the season, would not know how it stands until they officially take the field Saturday.
“I’m excited to see where we stand, the fall looked good and you can’t really tell where you are until you play someone else,” Spellman said. “The outside competition is going to be great. I’m glad that we are not starting with an in-conference game, so we kind of have that going for us, we can fix a few things before our first NE-10 game.”
White said while the team has made some estimations how they will fare this season, but agreed with the sentiment that the team will not know until their first match is complete.
“We made predictions on the season but we are not really going to know until the first game, so we are really anticipating that, it should definitely be a good matchup,” she said. “And the girls are very excited they are ready to be playing.”
Spellman said due to numerous coaching changes, the Northeast-10 will almost be like a new conference.
“We are not the only school in the NE-10 there has been five coaching changes, so everybody is really starting new,” Spellman said, “so it is really going to be kind of a brand new league and I’m excited to see where everybody else is and everyone else’s progress.”
As for what the offseason training entailed, Spellman said in addition to playing strong in the fall, the team worked on their stick skills, conditioning, and studied plenty of film, along with many more things.
White said the team members were also given training to do on their own, and that the girls really succeeded at it.
“They had a lot of preparation for themselves, we gave them a winter packet and they came back in great shape and showed us that they were working hard and ready to come back,” White said.
Spellman added that the work ethic of the team during the offseason has created a great feel for the season.
“It set a really good tone for the season when they came back in shape, ready to go, ready to work, and ready to make a change,” she said. “It is just a good omen for the season.”
As for what the team hopes to do to improve on their record from last season, Spellman said the team becoming unified will go a long way but also that the make-up of the team is going to be a fascinating thing to see once the season begins.
“I think team cohesiveness s huge and we have a lot more skill then has been here in the past and we do kind of have this weird separation of we have a bunch of freshmen and a bunch of seniors, so it is kind of an interesting team,” she said. “Usually either you have got a young team, or you have got an old team, we have got nobody in the middle, so it is going to be the cohesiveness and finally clicking is what we need to see and I don’t think that is going to happen until we are actually in a game.”
