Women’s Lacrosse Falls to Top-Ranked Trinity

 

The Middlebury women’s lacrosse team suffered its first loss of the season this past Saturday, April 13 against top-ranked Trinity College. Middlebury fell to the Bantams by a score of 10-9 in a nail-biting game that was tied at nine going into the last two minutes of play. On Tuesday, April 16 the team defeated Union College by a score of 19-9.

The Bantams came out firing early on in the first half, notching two goals for a 2-0 lead less than five minutes into the contest. Following a goal from Emma Kramer ’13, Trinity added two more markers to extend their lead to 4-1 at the 17:22 mark. Middlebury kept pace with the Bantams’ high-powered offense, however, with three goals coming from Laurel Pascal ’16, Ellen Halle ’13 and Liza Herzog ’14 to keep the Panthers trailing by a manageable 7-4 going into the second half.

Trinity ramped up the pressure on Middlebury early in the second half, with the score moving to 9-5 with 17 minutes left in the game. Then, two goals from Alice Pfeiffer ’13 gave the Panther offense the spark it needed to mount a comeback. After Pfeiffer’s two goals, Kramer netted two more to tie the game at 9-9 with five minutes left in game play.

Despite the late-game run, Middlebury’s comeback was thwarted with 1:53 remaining off of a crease-shot from Trinty’s Shea Kusiak.

Kramer, who finished the game with three goals, led Middlebury’s offensive effort against Trinity. Kramer’s performance was supported by two goals and an assist finish from Pfeiffer, three helpers from Margaret Souther ’13, and two points from Pascal. Halle, Herzog and Katie Ritter ’15 each added a goal while Chrissy Ritter ’16 added an assist for the Panthers. Alyssa Palomba ‘14, who played all 60 minutes for the Panthers, finished the game with six saves.

The Panthers were out-shot by the Bantams by a count of 19-17. Middlebury and Trinity were relatively even in the ground ball and draw matchups, with both teams scooping 16 loose balls, and Middlebury edging the draw battle at 11-10.

Halle reflected on her team’s uneven showing.

“We have moments of brilliance, but couldn’t string a full game together,” she said. “Alyssa was key in goal with really important saves, and Emma and Alice sparked an awesome comeback that fell short.”

Trinity, after defeating Middlebury, remains undefeated with a record of 11-0 overall, 7-0 in the NESCAC, while Middlebury drops to 10-1 overall, including a 7-1 mark in the NESCAC.

Halle also put the loss in perspective of the team’s push for the postseason.

“Unfortunately the end result wasn’t what we had hoped for as we were really geared towards beating Trinity,” said Halle. “We definitely had a lot of takeaways from the game that we’ll look to improve upon as we wrap up the season. A loss can sometimes be healthy as it just adds fuel to the fire. This in no way deflects from how incredible our season has been and were excited to keep pushing ourselves for NESCACs.”

This past Tuesday, the women came out in full force against Union College. Despite trading goals with Union for the first six minutes of the first period, the Panthers went on two five-goal scoring streaks, with one goal from Union’s Brittany Fraser in between, to end the first period ahead 12-3.

Union, however, was ableto close the goal differential by scoring three consecutive goals in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Tough Middlebury defense, and a spark from Ali Sciaretta’s ’16 goal off of Megan Griffin’s ’16 feed sparked another five-goal streak of Middlebury scoring to give the Panthers a substantial lead over the Dutchmen.

Middlebury will play Colby this coming Saturday, April 20, followed by Williams next Wednesday, April 24 in its regular season game.