The Hofstra women’s lacrosse team lost their matchup against No. 17 Johns Hopkins University on Saturday, March 9, by a score of 15-11 in their home stadium.
It was a tightly-contested first half for the Pride, who left for the halftime intermission with a 5-4 lead over the Blue Jays. Johns Hopkins scored the first goal of the game just a little over eight minutes into the half, then quickly scored again just over two minutes later to lead Hofstra 2-0 with 19 minutes remaining before the break.
Trailing 2-0, junior Alyssa Parrella finally got on the board for the Pride, scoring the first of her three goals on the evening with 16:08 remaining in the half. This proved to ignite Hofstra’s offense as they then went on to score three more unanswered goals to lead the Blue Jays 4-2 with nine minutes to go in the half. Johns Hopkins managed to tie the game up at four a piece before Parrella scored her second goal of the evening with 35 seconds remaining to give the Pride more life heading into the break ahead of the Blue Jays.
Hofstra’s defense started to fall apart as the Blue Jays began their offensive assault right out of the halftime break. They scored their first four goals within 10 minutes of the second half unanswered, including two goals in a 30-second span to take a commanding 8-5 lead on the road.
“In the second half, we lost some of the draw controls,” said Hofstra head coach Shannon Smith. “We won some and then we threw them away. We had some unforced turnovers in our clear, and I think that we got away from being on our matchups.”
Junior Darcie Smith then netted her first goal of the game for Hofstra to cut into the deficit and make the score 8-6 right before Johns Hopkins scored their fifth goal of the half with 19:06 remining in the game to quickly surpass their first half scoring output. With Johns Hopkins leading the game 10-6, Hofstra managed to make it interesting by scoring two crucial goals – the last of which was netted by Parrella to secure her hat trick on the day – in under 20 seconds to reach within two at 10-8. The Blue Jays then took a 11-8 lead before freshman Erin Demek scored her second goal of the game to cut it to a two goal deficit once again.
“We had our heads up the entire game, pushing through no matter what the score [was]. We did fight as hard as we can, and it’s just the little things I want to clean up for the rest of the season,” Parrella said.
This, however, would be the closest the Pride got to completing their comeback hopes as the Blue Jays tallied three consecutive goals to take a insurmountable 14-9 lead with five minutes left in the game. Hofstra still fought till the end to score two more goals while giving up one to make the final score 15-11. Johns Hopkins secured the road win to move to 6-1 on the season. Hofstra, who now is on the end of back-to-back losses the past two weeks, moves to 4-3 on the season.
“We have a really great team in that locker room,” Smith said. “We’ve got great leadership. We have to really stick together and continue to fight through. Our schedule doesn’t get any easier, but it was scheduled this way to really make the month of March hard so we can prepare for our conference. We have to continue to get better.”
Hofstra looks to bounce back from this hard-fought loss next Saturday, March 16, when they take on High Point University in Sparks, Maryland.
Photo Courtesy of Hofstra Athletics
