By Lindsay Carlton
It took the women’s lacrosse team two years to mark 20 points on the scoreboard again, but the wait was well worth it. Hofstra defeated Loyola, 20-13, on Sunday in its biggest scoring game since a 20-10 victory over Holy Cross in 2000.
The Pride can thank several of the team’s leading scorers for the 20-point accomplishment. Seven players scored in the game, three of which had more than two goals.
Hofstra may have had a bumpy start to the 2006 season, but now it knows what it takes to win.
“We play to win and share the ball and let the ball do the work,” head coach Shelley Klaes-Bawcombe said. “We’re really trying to get this team to understand that the more the ball gets through from person to person, the better off we’re going to do.”
The team took what its coach had to say seriously, as the Pride had 32 shots in the game, six more than Loyola.
Hofstra came out on top in the first half as senior attack Kimberly Hillier scored the first goal of the game within the first eight seconds. It wouldn’t be her last in the half, as she went on to score two more for the Pride and added two assists in the second half.
Though Hofstra had a four-point stretch starting at the 18:10 mark, the Greyhounds answered back with speedy goals of their own to keep the game close at 9-5 at the end of the first half.
“Overall I just think it was back and forth,” junior midfielder Casey McGrath said. “We were playing solid defense, but our attack was just coming up on top with more goals.” McGrath, who tallied six goals for the Pride, helped her team keep the ball moving at the start of the second when Hofstra had five consecutive goals coming from three different players.
“I think a lot of our teammates contributed to the attack,” Hillier said. “Everyone had numbers up on the board, and it was great because we all played together.”
But not everything about Sunday’s game was upbeat. At the 23:03 mark, senior midfielder Heather Albro went down with an injury to her lower back. Albro was down on the field for several minutes and didn’t remember anything other than catching the ball and getting hit from behind.
But Albro wasn’t surprised at Loyola’s aggressiveness, saying, “They do like to foul and get check happy, they really are very physical, but we were expecting that.”
“I keep telling my team take a hit, don’t be afraid to get that hit and score that goal, because you won’t feel that pain after,” Klaes-Bawcombe added. “I was proud of her for finishing with a foul.”
At the 24:19 mark, the Pride watched the Greyhounds score four straight goals to close the deficit to four in the second half. But this four-point gap was too big for Loyola to surpass, as senior attack Catherine Guerriere ended the comeback on a free-position goal at the 15:26 mark. With 23 seconds left in the game the Greyhounds’ last goal came from an unassisted shot by Sydney Greene.
The Pride is riding high on a three-game winning streak and on Friday will head down to Hofstra’s sudden rival, George Mason. Following the Mason men’s basketball team’s unjust bid into the NCAA Tournament, the Pride is ready to settle some scores.
“We always say it should have been Hofstra in there,” McGrath said. “So I think we’re going to come out just as hard and have a chip on our shoulders the way any Hofstra team would.”
