Women's lacrosse effortlessly grabs two more

Team pleased with first win but not the second

The women's lacrosse team added two more wins to their record this week, to bring it to 3-2. The first game was a rewarding 19-8 home win against Division II Gannon College on Saturday and the second was a 15-4 win at Allegheny College on Tuesday.

About the Gannon game senior Nicole Miller said, "We played real well and thought [the win] would have been a lot tougher."

Coach Mindy Manolovich said, "It was really great. We stuck to our game plan and capitalized on opportunities, such as their weak goal-keeper." Gannon's keeper stopped only 13 shots while allowing 19 goals to come up with a 40.6 save percentage.

Meanwhile, Oberlin junior Alysia Oakley had a 66 save percentage, with 88 percent for the first half. "Alysia had a real good game," Manolovich said.

Oakley could not take full credit for the 8-3 score at half-time as Gannon had some good scoring opportunities that they barely missed out on. "We were lucky," Manolovich said. "I felt at the half it should have been more like 8-7. They had five shots that hit the post. Part of it was because of our defensive positioning and the goalkeeper forcing errors on the attacker, but we were also lucky."

Even with this defensive bonus, the team played a very tight game. "Our fundamental skills were really good, we hustled to the ball, were patient on defense and communicated," Manolovich said. "We also tried to shut down their main play-maker and were very successful at that. The defense limited her to receiving the ball and limited her rolling the crease."

On offense Oberlin also exhibited blistering skills and smart judgments. "Our attackers really stepped up and found their niche," Manolovich said. "They executed at a high level." Notable performances came from senior Bepi Barry, who drilled in eight goals, senior Kate Williams, who had three, and junior Anne Ewens, sophomore Melissa Ross and junior Atsuko Sakurai, who accounted for two apiece.

Tuesday's Allegheny game was less of a success, according to Manolovich, though the score would imply otherwise. "I was disappointed in how we played," she said. "I feel we are a high-caliber team and we didn't work at a high-caliber level. Allegheny is by no means a bad team. They shut down two of our players."

Manolovich thinks the team has a tendency to play down or up to the level of the team they're playing. "Allegheny was really scrappy and we took over that identity to some extent," she said. "We want teams to match up to us and not the other way around."

"We played down," Miller said. "Our fundamentals weren't there and we were not as intense as we could have been."

While this is the coach's main concern about the game, otherwise she feels pretty good about the Yeowomen's effort. "A lot of nice things happened, even if we didn't work together as a whole," she said. One such nice thing was the continuing success the team has had meeting both personal and team goals.

Manolovich often has her players write down a personal goal while setting a team goal. Typical personal goals include: hustling to every ground ball, to have an interception, to score so many goals, or to have a 70 percent accuracy rate on passes. Miller said her personal goal was "Not to have any turn-overs during my possessions."

The team's goal was to maintain possession of the ball for 70 percent of the game, or 21 minutes of each 30-minute half. "That's a very high expectation to have," Manolovich said. The team was short only 21 seconds in the first half and 45 seconds in the second.

"It was a great goal to achieve," Miller said. "All of our personal goals contributed to the success of the team's goal."

Another team achievement was that the Yeowomen did not commit a single foul in the first 19-minutes of the game. "That's really incredible," Manolovich said. "We also found that after we started to foul more, the other team started to score more."

This aspect of the team's success bodes well for the team's future. "It showed we are capable of doing something that can do so much to a game's outcome," Manolovich said. "This team has so many capabilities it shows me the capability of the team to be successful. Our focus needs to be kept on keeping these capabilities consistent."

This Saturday the team plays Ithaca College, who are currently ranked sixth in the nation, before taking on another tough team, the University of Rochester, on Sunday. Will the team still be playing at Allegheny's level when trying to take on these teams?

"No," Manolovich said. "They're smart enough to realize their mistakes and they learn from their mistakes. They've learned to let things go and focus on the next team. The team understands that you have your good days and your bad days and that now is the time to move on."

"Our team is very mental," Miller said. "If we're playing a good team we tend to go out strong. We don't let past games hurt our future ones."

Defensive scramble: The Yeowomen showed good form last week against Frostburg State and they have continued this with 19-8 and 15-4 wins against Gannon and Allegheny. Last year the team finished second in the conference and who knows where they'll go this year. (photo by Zack Fried)