By Alana Pelosi, Sports Editor
The women’s lacrosse team looks to wrap up regular season conference play tomorrow with a game at Drexel. Locked in as the No.3 seed in the CAAs, the Pride will make a conference tournament appearance for the first time in three years. The Pride can go into Thursday’s game a bit more relaxed if they manage not to get ahead of themselves. The girls already know that they will face No. 2 Towson, who they lost to on Sunday, next Thursday and it is a thought that their coaches will try to keep out of their minds. While this type of play will be new to some of the younger squad members, veterans senior attack Corrine Gandolfi, senior midfielder K’Leigh Vanaman and the senior class will be there to guide the team.
The Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens failed to even take a swing at the Pride in Friday’s matchup. Adopting a new pre-game strategy, the Pride had control of the game from the start. “I think our focused as a team was really get back to Hofstra get back to what we do well stop being so con about scouting report we didn’t show any film where we had been showing a good bunch of film before,” said head coach Abby Morgan.
The Pride scored four goals before UD was able to muster up their first tally of the game. Hofstra added another two before going into halftime 6-1.
The second half was no different for the Pride and even though both teams took 16 shots in the half, Delaware was only able to get five past goalies, senior Mary Cuddihy and sophomore Jackie Pandolf, who tallied a combined seven saves in the second and won the game 15-6. For the game, freshman attack Jill Maier and Vanaman scored three goals apiece with Maier scoring her three all in a row. Gandolfi and senior attack Courtney O’Connor both added two goals with Gandolfi also contributing a team-high three ground balls.
The Pride fumbled Sunday’s matchup against Towson. Things were difficult from the get-go for the Pride, as halfway through the first half they were in a 3-0 hole. Gandolfi got the scoring rolling for the Pride as she scored their first goal of the game, initiating a five-goal tear and going into half time up 5-4.
The Pride then opened the second half with a goal from senior midfielder Sandy Wasserbach, but from there it was a slippery downward slope. Jess Dunn from Towson was able to narrow Towson’s lead to 6-5 and then two free position shots gave the Tigers the go-ahead 7-6 lead. From there on out the Pride was unable to regain the strength and lost the game, 7-9. Despite the loss Cuddihy gave a career performance as she had a game-high twelve saves.