The women’s lacrosse team sustained its first loss of the season, going down 12-8 against the top-ranked Laurier Golden Hawks this past weekend, but made up for it with 13-12 and 12-6 victories over the University of Toronto Varsity Blues and Guelph Gryphons, to keep the Gaels second in the OUA.
“We felt good about [the weekend],” said player and coach Jodey Therriault. “We’re five and one right now and second in the league. It was rainy out there so it was kind of messy, but we held it together and played good games.”
Therriault said that, coming out of the weekend, the team was focusing on conditioning and transitional play in order to prepare themselves for this weekend, when they will host Laurier, Guelph and Western.
“There were a few areas we realized we had problems with that needed working out,” she said. “So we spent the week concentrating on them. We’ll be a bit quicker and a bit cleaner this weekend.”
The team’s other player-coach, Ruth McArthur, held praise for the whole team and commended the team’s goalies on their play over the weekend.
“We played really hard and, on Saturday, our goalie Freyah Durand kept us in it. On Sunday, our second goalie Kalyn Bolland stepped in when Freyah got injured and kept us in it for the win.”
McArthur said on top of conditioning and transition, the team has been putting in work on their defensive play.
“We needed to work on defence and overall strength in the defensive end,” she said.
Centre Lisa McLaughlin, who ended the weekend with four goals against Guelph, two against Laurier and one against Toronto, and a combined four assists, said the team will use the next few contests to focus on increasing pressure on its opponents.
“We wanted to increase the pressure from our previous games,” she said. “Laurier’s an intense defensive team and we need to overcome that. We also need to learn to play under pressure.”
The women’s lacrosse team will be hosting its only regular season home games this weekend at North Field on West Campus. They play Laurier at 9 a.m. Saturday, Western at 1 p.m. Saturday and Guelph at 1 p.m. Sunday.
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