After the women’s lacrosse team beat Princeton 9-5 yesterday to clinch at least a share of the Ivy title I interviewed sophomore Ali DeLuca, seniors Sarah Waxman and Rachel Manson and coach Karin Brower. Unfortunately I couldn’t include all of their quotes in my recap due to limited space in the DP, so over the next couple of days I’ll post some material here to the Buzz. First up, THE RUN.

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With the score 3-1 Penn at half time of the women’s lacrosse game against Princeton yesterday, the game was still very much in the air. Even though Penn had dominated the first half by holding onto the ball for at least 20 of the 30 minutes, Princeton was just a run away from taking back control of the game.

At the same time, the Quakers were pretty confident they’d be the team to pull away in the second.

“Going into the game and at halftime there never was a doubt in anyone’s mind that we weren’t going to win this game,” senior attack Rachel Manson said.

Still coach Karin Brower had to say something at halftime to make sure the Quakers followed through on their confidence.

“Our goal has been to play for 60 minutes,” she said. “I told them we played a great 30 minutes but we need to think like it’s 0-0. We got 30 minutes to beat Princeton and remember this for the rest of our lives.

“I think that defensively keep up what we were doing. They were very patient, playing good one-on-one defense and weren’t doubling early. Keep working on denying cuts. On offense we just wanted to be patient. And in the second half it just opened up for us.”

And open up it did. Within just the first 10 minutes of the second half, the Quakers scored five goals, while surrendering zero. During the stretch Princeton held the ball for less than two and a half minutes and only got off three shots, two of which were off target. By the end of the run the game had gone from a 3-1 tight-knit match, to an 8-1 dominating performance.

“I thought it was important to come out hard at the first whistle of the second half,” Manson said. “Just to put them away and make sure they’re not going to comeback, they’re not going to win this game. So I think it was really pretty awesome that we scored at the beginning of the second half and we kept that run going. And if they scored we either answered back or got a stop. We never let them back in it.”

While she’d never take responsibility herself, if you had to credit just one player for the run, it’d have to be Manson. The product out of lacrosse power St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes in Alexandria, Va. scored the first two goals of the run (she also had the game’s first goal). The first goal in the run came off of a free position shot that bounced its way past Princeton goalie Kaitlin Perrelle, and the second was off of a heads up play when she cradled a rebound off of Perrelle and shot it right back into the net.

But the best goal of the run was scored by sophomore Ali DeLuca. Senior Chelsea Kocis, weaving behind the Princeton goal, threw up a pass over the goal that DeLuca jumped for, snagged out of mid-air, cradled and shoot, all without touching the ground, just like an Alley-oop.

Despite the increased scoring in the second half, some Quakers didn’t really feel they had changed their game plan after the break.

“It wasn’t anything different,” goalkeeper Sarah Waxman said. “In the first half we had the ball a lot, and we were patient and they just didn’t have the ball at all … People bash our attack as well. But I think that run we went on is another example of how our attack is good.”

With the lead much larger than it had just been 10 minutes ago, a significant degree of pressure was lifted from Waxman after the run.

The run “was like a gift from God,” the senior captain said. “But any good goalie is going to tell you they don’t let the momentum of their team dictate their play. So it was 0-0 to me the entire game. But in the back of my head when we scored I’d be like, ‘ok, we’re up by six goals.’ It’s also a lot easier to talk to people going back to the draw [after a goal].”

Regardless of its impact on Waxman, the run in it of itself was significant. How significant? Without it, Penn would’ve lost by one goal, 5-4.

Next up: Impact on the rankings

Tags: women's lacrosse

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Ivy League, Lacrosse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.