Today: Mar 29, 2024

Women’s lacrosse loses to Purple Knights, beat Eagles

Hunter O. LyleSports Editor

Looking to continue the team’s early success, the women’s lacrosse team faced off against out-of conference opponent Bridgeport University, which ended in a battle of attrition with the Purple Knights toppling the Owls 11-10.

In the teams home opener, Southern blew out Dominican College 22-4, tying the programs second-highest scoring performance ever — first ever at home. Head coach Kevin Siedlecki said while the win gave the team a boost in confidence, they knew it would be a new level of competition with the Purple Knights.

“I mean, you really have to throw [the previous game] away. You know, they’re very different teams,” said Siedlecki. “Bridgeport is a team that we knew would give us a good game. Dominican we kind of knew we would outmatch them a little bit, so going into that one it was lets polish up what we were doing, lets clean things up a little bit, and going into this one we had to execute, we had to get things done and play our game against a team that would challenge us.”

Both teams were 1-0 coming in and seemed to focus on offense early in the game. Attacker Karlie Rowe, a sophomore opened the game in just the fourth minute with a score off a free position shot.

Eight minutes later, Bridgeport responded off the same situation. Four minutes after that, Southern once again scored off yet another free position shot, which was then answered by Bridgeport minutes later. Such was the game that quickly became a back and-forth battle of scoring.

“[Bridgeport] was pretty even with us on the playing field,” said Rowe, “so every time they got a goal we had to respond. We couldn’t let ourselves get down.”

This tic-for-tac trend continued all the way through the first half, with the Purple Knights eventually taking a two goal lead with a score with 18 seconds left in the first period of play.

Southern’s frequent shooting — 19 shots with 16 on goal to Bridgeport’s 12 and 10 — is something Siedlecki said is a major game plan, granting them more opportunities.

“In a game like that it could have gone either way with a couple different bounces. I mean just two of the [many] shots that we missed going in,” said Seidlecki. “That won’t always be the case. The law of averages, statistics will average out and we’ll win a couple games.”

Playing from behind, the Owls came out of the halftime with new energy. Even though the Purple Knights scored early in the half, the Owls went on a 3-1 run to tie the game at seven with just under 24 minutes left to play. After the initial scoring boost, the game once again turned into a battle, with both teams scoring within minutes of each other.

Brigeport would score, gaining a two goal lead, and then Southern would cut it down time and time again, however Southern would not tie the score again. With time running out, attacker Morgan Chase, a senior, would cut the game to one, which would result in a final score of 11-10.

“I’m not at all disappointed with the effort. You know, obviously you want to come out on the right side of it, you want to win the game,” said Siedlecki, “but we fought really hard against a good team. We hit the goalie so many times, but we just didn’t finish our shots. We dominated everything else about the game, and if we just finished two more shots, we just had to finish. It will come.”

At the end of regulation, seven Owls made it into the scoring column. Rowe along with fellow attacker Bayleigh Tackas, a sophomore, and defender Mia Pulisciano, a sophomore, ended with two goals. Chase, attacker Hailey Gordon, a junior, midfielders Steph Seymour, another junior, and Kelly Jagodzinski, a sophomore, all grabbed one goal each.

Reflecting on the team’s effort, Siedlecki said he is confident wins will come as long as they continue the hard work shown against Bridgeport.

“We don’t get any days off really. We have to play games like this or better opponents basically every day,” said Siedlecki. “It’s tough but that’s where you want to be. At the end of the day, you want to be playing great lacrosse games every day, and it’s way more fun than winning or losing by 20.”

Evidentially, Siedlekci was correct, as the team came out on Saturday and beat Post University 18-7. In that game, Rowe, Tackas and Seymour all scored four times each. Gordon earned a hat-trick, Pulisciano scored twice and Jagodzinski scored once.

Tackas also had five assists on the day, tying the program’s single-game record previously set in 2015. She also tied the record for second most points — goals and assists — with nine against Post University.

Photo Credit: Hunter Lyle

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