By Nina Zimmerman
The Ladies lacrosse team proved its combative mettle on Mavec Field on Saturday, beating the Ohio Wesleyan University Battling Bishops 20-5. The Ladies hit the field again on Sunday and beat the North Central College Cardinals 18-9 in a Senior Day smackdown.
What was great about this weekend is we have a lot of depth and everyone got to play and all over the field everyone just did so well, co-captain Marissa Henderson 13 said. It was great to come together as a team. We could just go outside and have fun playing lacrosse.
Against the Bishops, 10 different Ladies found the net; Jane Symmes 16 led the scoring with four goals. Emily Nichols 13 netted three of her own, giving her a team-leading total of 30 goals on the season. Leah Sack 13 had five assists and one goal, and those six offensive points brought her career total up to 214 points and took her to the top spot on the Ladies all-time career points list.
Head Coach Meredith Buzzi praised the Ladies defense for holding the Bishops to only five goals and highlighted the significance of the lopsided win. Ohio Wesleyan is always kind of a target game for us, Buzzi said. It could go either way on any given year. This year it obviously went in our favor pretty significantly.
Beating the Bishops helped the Ladies bounce back from their close loss to Wittenberg University last week and gave them good momentum heading into their Senior Day game on Sunday against North Central. Though the Cardinals drew first blood, scoring 20 seconds after the start of the game, Nichols responded with a goal 26 seconds later, assisted by Sack. The scoring went back and forth from there until Katherine Lang 14 scored with 13 minutes left in the half, starting a string of seven unanswered goals by the Ladies. By halftime the game was wide open and the Ladies led 14-5 en route to their 18-9 finish. Symmes once again led the scoring with four goals, though 10 different players found the net that day.
Buzzi attributed a large portion of the Ladies success so far this season to team chemistry, one of the intangibles over which she has no control.
I think that the team has a genuine affection for each other, Buzzi said. They like each other, and they want to play hard for each other every day in practice and every day in games. And thats really something you cant coach, so I think that theyre doing that all themselves.
The Ladies next game is scheduled for April 11 at Hiram College. Hiram added its mens and womens lacrosse programs this year, so this game will be the first meeting on the lacrosse field between the Ladies and the Terriers. Theyre a first-year team so theyre going to be building, so I think it should be a good game, Henderson said.
After Hiram, the Ladies will come back to Gambier to face off against the Allegheny College Gators on Saturday, April 13 on Mavec Field. As a part of Division III Week, Student Activities will be giving away free hot dogs to all fans in attendance at the game.
Buzzi said Allegheny is historically a tougher team to beat. Alleghenys kind of one of those question mark teams, she said. We want to make sure were preparing for them as well as possible, but they always have something intangible that they bring … to the game that just overwhelms us at some point. So we want to make sure we are prepared for everything on Saturday.
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