The Elizabethtown College women’s lacrosse team took on the University of Scranton Royals last Saturday at Elizabethtown’s Wolf Field. The game occurred in the afternoon after an intermittent series of rain showers and storms the night before.
The match started with a fierce stalemate between the two teams. Neither the Jays nor the Royals could break past each other’s defenses for nearly six minutes. Eventually, the Blue Jays committed a foul, giving Scranton a penalty shot. Scranton senior Grace Lane scored the first goal of the match, with Scranton sophomore Eileen Hewitt earning another goal roughly twenty seconds later.
Scranton’s plays were successfully aggressive throughout the entire game. Players used multiple stick fakes to move closer to the goal before scoring to psych out the Blue Jays’ goalie. Meanwhile, the first quarter saw the Royals knock the ball away from the Jays countless times.
Etown tried to counter with their aggressive plays, but it did little to pierce the Royals’ defenses. At one point, the Jays took advantage of an out-of-bounds ball and tossed the ball away from the Royals to weaken their defense. Later, the Royals suffered two simultaneous penalties, and the Jays tried to exploit this weakness in their defenses.
However, this did little to stop Scranton’s offence. They seemed unstoppable once they established their flow, as every attempt to score from the Jays was met by a counter and goal from the Royals.
The Scranton team continued to demolish the competition throughout the first half. Scranton junior Jessica McCabe constantly outplayed Etown, scooping the ball away from a group of Jays and outmaneuvering them. Later, McCabe dove into a group of about three Jays to break past their defense and score a goal. While that initial attempt wasn’t successful, she scored shortly after play resumed.
The rain picked up into a slight drizzle as the game approached halftime. The Royals had shut down the Jays completely with a halftime score of 0-12. Bouncing back did not seem impossible for Etown, but scoring 13 goals while defending against Scranton seemed like a Herculean feat. The tides did not turn in favor of the Jays when the third quarter started, but the rain and clouds lessened.
The Jays struggled to surpass Scranton, but they bolstered their defense enough to halt their momentum. Elizabethtown senior Rachel Murphy blocked shot after shot in the second half of the game, doing her best to ensure Scranton would not build up their lead anymore. They still scored here and there, but their performance paled in comparison to earlier.
Meanwhile, the Blue Jays finally found their flow and began finding the net. Careful positioning and passes around the Scranton goal allowed Elizabethtown junior Drew Bridges to find the right moment to score, finally earning the Jays their first goal. Throughout the second half, Bridges and Blue Jay first-year Ella Scholes each scored once more.
The Blue Jays did not score frequently enough to impact Scranton’s lead. While the Royals won the game 3-16—and did similarly well against the Elizabethtown men’s lacrosse team on their home field—the Blue Jays put up a good fight and successfully held back the landslide brought about by a tumultuous first half. The game brought the Elizabethtown women’s lacrosse team record to 8-5, while the Royals moved up to a record of 9-5.
The team will celebrate their seniors this Saturday at Wolf Field, as they take on Wilkes University.
