By Steven Wolff – STAFF WRITER
The Hofstra women’s lacrosse team still remains winless, falling in Baltimore to the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays, ranked No.19, with a final score of 17-3.
This loss comes after No. 1ranked Maryland beat them last weekend 20-5.
In the defeat, senior midfielder Becky Conto had a pair of goals after graduate attacker Lindsay Scott opened the scoring on the day. Scott, the leading scorer for the Pride this season, recorded her 18th goal.
However, after Scott scored the opening goal, Johns Hopkins sophomore attacker CeCe Finney responded with two unassisted goals. That gave the Blue Jays the lead, and they would not look back.
Johns Hopkins’ Dene’ Dimartino had three goals, an assist, six draw controls and four ground balls. Additionally, Jays’ sophomore midfielder Shannon Fitzgerald scored 20 seconds after Finney, erupting for a dominant four-goal performance on the afternoon.
The Blue Jays’ balanced scoring attack is a point of emphasis that Hofstra has lacked this season. Other than Scott, no other member of the Pride has more than six goals.
Scott has now scored at least one goal in all five of the Pride’s games this season, while Tiana Parrella is in the middle of a three-game scoring streak.
Hofstra still has not won a game this year due to rough starts. They were down 12-0 at halftime against Maryland and 11-1 against the Blue Jays.
The Pride has also had fewer opportunities to score. Johns Hopkins held a 30-14 shot advantage, putting more pressure on goalies Maddie Fields and Alexis Greene.
Despite that, Greene had six saves and three ground balls. Hofstra did a good job of forcing a few Blue Jay turnovers.
The pride held a 6-5 advantage, due in part to senior defender Shelby Milne and junior defender Audrey Byrd. They each tallied a pair of caused turnovers.
The last time Hofstra even came close to losing its first five games was in 2005 when the Pride lost its first four. That team snapped that streak by beating sixth-ranked Boston University 11-8. The Pride hasn’t shown that it is capable of beating a top-ranked team this year so far.
Hofstra is still searching for its first win of the season, and the Pride will look to break through into the win column when the team travels to Connecticut Saturday to face Quinnipiac at 3 p.m.