By Drew Buono

For Matthew Southard and the Blue & Gold’s men’s lacrosse team, it is now time to win an NCAA championship.

Southard is in his fifth season as goalie for a team that is making a name for itself as a serious national championship contender. The Pride is on a three-game winning streak, which includes wins over Princeton and defending national champion Johns Hopkins. According to teammate Ryan Lucas, Southard’s “saves get the team fired up and ready to go score.”

Southard wanted to be a part of this year’s team so much that he decided against graduating last year (he added another major to the management degree he already earned just to play another season for the Pride). With practice now being scheduled at 11:30 a.m. instead of the old time of 1:30 p.m., Southard has scheduled all of his classes after practice with most of them taking place on Monday and Wednesday.

Southard admits to having more free time this semester than any other and loves having one more chance to win a national title for the Pride.

“National rankings mean nothing unless you win a championship, and that has been my goal here since day one,” he said. While talking about what will be his last year on the team, Southard also reflected on his new teammates.

“The freshmen were green at first and had to learn how to do everything day-to-day,” he said. “It’s difficult to adjust from high school to college level lacrosse, but the new guys are doing really well now.” Mike Colleluori is one of those new freshman teammates and believes the Pride has, “a great chance this season to win and a player like Southard can only make our team better.”

It’s not just the freshmen that have had to get their acts together, but the whole team. Lucas said it best when he stated, “It’s all about team chemistry and we’ve made great efforts to come together as a whole and play our style of lacrosse.”

Now in his 20th season with the Pride, head coach JohnDanowski pushes the team to play the “Hofstra way” and right now that way seems to be getting wins for the team.

So far this season, Southard has played all but eight minutes of the Pride’s first four games. During that time, he has allowed just 5.94 goals per game and has saved 54.9 percent of the shots that have come his way.

Lucas said one of Southard’s biggest saves this season was during the March 15 game against North Carolina. “He made a key save late in the game that helped us to hold on for the [6-5] win,” he said.

Throughout Southard’s career, many goalies have played for the team. Now, Southard has two back-ups: freshman Pat DeBolt and Brian Schneider. The three of them make up the team’s self-proclaimed “G-Unit.”