By Hayden Cogswell
The women’s lacrosse team, with a strong preseason under their belt, looks to start off their season with two wins this upcoming weekend.
After recent preseason games against Regis University and University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the Tigers are nearly ready for their first game of the season.
“The scrimmages went pretty well, we still have a lot of kinks to work out but there’s so much potential for this team to be great,” said Allie Thuet ’20. “I know as the season goes on we’re going to be successful, and I was really impressed with how both our goalies, Alena Stern [’21] and Natalie Slade [’23], have been playing so far.”
Continuing on an impressive three-year streak, the Tigers were named in the top 25 of the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association (IWLCA) preseason poll earlier this year. Their ranking at No. 17 comes off the back of a very impressive season with a record 19 victories in 2019. With that high ranking comes pressure, and one of the toughest schedules to ever face the team. In the 2020 season, the team will face six IWLCA ranked teams, with five coming to face the Tigers on home turf.
While their schedule is daunting, the team is focusing on themselves and not on the opposition to come.
“We were obviously really excited to get ranked highly in the preseason polls, and I think our main goal for the season is to execute and play to the level we know we’re capable of,” Thuet said.
“Our schedule this year is one of the most difficult we’ve had since I’ve been on the team, but I think our main goal is just knowing that we’re capable of being a top caliber team and executing against other teams.”
With such a challenging schedule on the cards the team is cutting no corners in their preparations.
“We’ve been really focused on perfecting the basics these past few weeks, like our settled offense and defense, and the transition,” said captain Lauren Pejza ’20.
“We’ve also been getting into in-season shape with lift and conditioning, and I feel really good about the team’s speed and focus going into this weekend.”
With the intense focus the players needed to start the season off strongly, the coaches have doubled down on their efforts to ensure that the squad is ready.
“The coaches have definitely started this season on a more serious note than in years past,” Pejza stated, “which has been a great catalyst in getting the entire team focused and ready for our first games this weekend.”
The Tigers will travel to Tennessee for the weekend of Feb. 21-23 to open their season with matchups against Rhodes College and Illinois Wesleyan University.