Women’s Lacrosse Wins Season Opener

The women’s lacrosse team had a successful start to the spring season after defeating Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), 16- 7, at their home game on Saturday, Feb. 24. Sophomore mid fielders, Paige Sherlock and Brianna Feldman scored four goals apiece to bring the Pioneers home.

Jill LoManto, sophomore attacker, led all players with seven points, all by assists. Olivia Kirk, senior goalkeeper, made 16 saves on 23 shots on goal. Trish Brisotti, junior mid fielder, added three goals of her own, along with two goals from Alyssa Mallery, sophomore mid fielder.

“We motivated and pushed each other throughout the whole game,” Brianna Feldman, sophomore mid fielder, said. “The overall chemistry of the offense and defense came together to help us play as a unit.”

The Pioneers scored four straight goals in the opening 10:00 leading 4-0. A goal from SNHU made it 4-1, before another four goal surge from the Pioneers. The halftime score was 9-3, and in the second half, the Pioneers closed the game on a 7-4 run for the win.

The women’s lacrosse team is facing some changes this season. “We’ve been doing a lot of prep work, working a lot on fundamentals and concepts, change our mentality approaching the game,” Meghan McNamara, head coach, said.

Two rule changes began for the 2018 season: free movement, which allows the players to move on the field freely like a majority of sports, and the addition of the possession clock for Divisions II and III, which Division I had for the 2017 season.

“It creates a very upbeat, uptempo game. It’s back and forth, the way the game should be played. Adding the free movement on top of that – it’s never-ending and it’s great,” McNamara said. “It puts a lot of honess on the players to understand what the situations are, how to control the tempo. It’s changed a lot but it brought back the love of the game and the speed of the game that we enjoy to play,” she said.

McNamara laid out some short-term goals for the team to improve on this season. “We know we are going to be faced with a lot of adversity, different situations, getting comfortable with the rule changes and finding ourselves. We obviously want to compete, we want to do well and we want to put ourselves in a position to compete in the ECC championship.”

The Pioneers return to action on Wednesday, Feb. 28 when they host Bentley University at 3:00 p.m.