by Reed Dickerson
In spite of a powerful opening drive and a formidable lead, the Kenyon women’s lacrosse team couldn’t see their way to another conference victory this past weekend against the College of Wooster. The Ladies lost to the Fighting Scots 17-9.
“I know that they played their best they did all season against us, and being the 2013 champion, you expect people to come out and gun for you,” Head Coach Meredith Buzzi said.
The game opened up well for the Ladies, who scored three goals in under two-and-a-half minutes. Co-Captain Kate Lang ’14 scored the first goal, assisted by fellow captain Alex Bair ’14. Lara McMahon ’14 followed up with an unassisted strike, and Lang launched another goal, this time unassisted.
Wooster responded with four goals in a row, but picked up a yellow-card penalty with seven minutes left in the first half, giving the Ladies a player advantage. Bair scored and tied up the game at 4-4. However, the Wooster offense came back hard, and despite another Kenyon goal, scored by Caroline Shipman ’15 off an Amy Morgan ’14 assist, the first half ended with Wooster up four, 9-5.
Unfortunately for the Ladies, Wooster’s momentum carried into the second half. The Fighting Scots scored eight more times before the end of the period. But the Ladies fought back at times. Morgan bypassed the defenders to score an unassisted goal in the first minute, and Bair and Lang brought the score up to 12-8 with a pair of goals near the middle of the half. Ansen Burr ’16 scored the Ladies’ final goal with two and a half minutes left, and Kenyon lost by a final score of 17-9.
Penalties played an important role in the game. Although the Ladies got through the first half of the game with no penalties, they accrued three by the end of the game, leading to one man-up goal scored by Wooster. The Wooster offense also played aggressively, taking 31 shots compared to Kenyon’s 25. Twenty-three of Wooster’s shots were on goal and Kenyon goalkeepers Meredith Bentsen ’15 and Indigo Eisendrath ’17 made only six saves between them.
“They kind of caught up with us, energy-wise and emotion-wise and then they took over and had a lot of momentum throughout the course of the game,” Buzzi said.
The Ladies faced another challenging opponent Wednesday afternoon as they faced off with Denison and suffered another loss, 16-12. At the end of the first half, the Ladies were down 10-4, but made a valiant attempt at a comeback in the second half, scoring a total of four goals within the first 10 minutes of the period. Bair, Burr, and Lang all scored unassisted goals. At one point late in the game, the Ladies pulled within three points of Denison, but the Big Red hung on to preserve their win.
The Ladies play their last game of the regular season this coming Saturday, April 26 against the DePauw University Tigers here in Gambier. They hope to add one more win to their current record of 8-6.