On Sunday, March 20, at James M. Shuart Stadium, Vanderbilt University rallied over the Hofstra women’s lacrosse team, 12-9. Hofstra is currently 3-2 against Vanderbilt all time and Sunday marked the first time the two teams had met since 2007.

 Leading the game in goals was graduate student Katie Whelan, with five tallies and two assists. Whelan currently has 130 draw controls which is ninth all-time in program history. She broke a tie for 10th place with Kathleen Mikowski (127 from 2001-3) and passed Jill Maier (128 from 2010-13). 

 Whelan scored the game’s first two goals in the first four minutes with ease, while senior Grace Langella added another goal at the 9:19 mark of the first quarter to make it 3-0. Vanderbilt scored twice in the final minutes of the first quarter, but Hofstra still led by one going into the second.

 Whelan completed her hat trick early in the second quarter, making the score 4-2. The Pride maintained a three-goal lead through the first half, but Vanderbilt scored the final two goals of the quarter to tie the game at four going into halftime. 

 Early in the third quarter, the Commodores scored twice to complete a 4-0 run spanning both halves to take a 6-4 lead before junior Kate Fiola scored off an assist from Taylor Mennella to cut the advantage to one. Mennella added on a goal while achieving a career-high in assists for the second game in a row. Fiola also had a career-high four ground balls, a goal and a caused turnover.

 Vanderbilt extended its lead to four goals on two occasions before Hofstra rallied. Junior Katie Kelly scored with 2:52 left in the third quarter, making it a 10-7 game, while Whelan scored back-to-back goals early in the fourth quarter. Hofstra could not get over the hump, and Vanderbilt prevailed 12-9 to end the game. 

 For the sixth time this season and the 24th time in her career, goalie Jess Smith had double-digit saves with 12. She also recorded three ground balls. 

 According to head coach Shannon Smith, the most significant aspect of coming into this game was a shift in mindset and realizing that the game against Stony Brook was not going to be the same game against Vanderbilt. “Hats off to Vanderbilt,” Smith said. “They played extremely well, but I just thought that we had some good parts throughout this game, and then we had some parts where we made some turnovers … so things to clean up, things to improve off of and things to get better as we move forward into the most important part of our season.”

 Despite the offensive diversity with scorers, adjustments are necessary. “We’ve got two more weeks to get better before we get into our conference, and we’ve got to fix some things on our offense right now,” Smith said. The first conference game for the Pride will be against James Madison University, on Saturday, April 2, at James M. Shuart Stadium.

 Following Sunday’s loss, the Pride drops to 6-3 while the Commodores advance to 6-3.

 Before conference play begins, Hofstra will hit the road and head to Storrs, Connecticut, on Saturday, March 26, to take on the No. 22 team in the nation, the University of Connecticut. 

Photo courtesy of Evan Bernstein/Hofstra Athletics