By Andrew Arnao
Contributing Writer
Despite an outstanding effort by Ali Carey ’14, the Bison women’s lacrosse team fell to St. Bonaventure 14-10 in their season opener on Sunday.
In her collegiate debut, Carey scored five goals, highlighting the large youth presence on a team that saw seven first-years playing in the opener.
Other top performers included Katelyn Miller ’14 with two goals, Julia Braun’11 with one goal and an assist, Madison Hurwitz ’13 with one goal, Kerri Althouse ’14 with one goal and Molly Ford ’14 with two assists.
The Bison fell behind 8-2 in the first half after struggling to clear the ball. The Orange and the Blue fought back though with a strong end to the half. In the last six minutes the team scored five goals compared to St. Bonaventure’s one to make the halftime score 9-7.
“Since our team is so young, we played pretty frantically at first and threw the ball away a lot on the clears, which gave St. Bonaventure a big lead,” Miller said. “In the middle of the first half I think we kind of pulled things together, and we had a good comeback to keep the score close.”
After failing to make any saves, St. Bonaventure’s goalie Sara Schalagenhauf was replaced with backup goalie Karly Kocis for the second half. Kocis proved much more effective, making nine saves over the second half while allowing only three goals. Meanwhile, the Bonnies started off the half with four consecutive goals, ending the Bison’s momentum and putting the game out of reach.
Bison goalie Alyssa DeLorenz ’11, who had allowed nine goals against two saves in the first half, recovered nicely to allow only five goals against seven saves in the second half.
The Bison were plagued by 23 turnovers, 15 occurring in the first half. The Bison were also 11 for 22 on clears, compared to 17 for 18 for the Bonnies. Still, the team is optimistic about the future.
“The thing that was great about this game was that we never gave up on each other or got frustrated with each other even though we were down,” Althouse said. “I have faith that we’re going to improve with every day that goes by, and we’re going to keep growing together as a team.”
Carey, the star of the game, also applauded the performance of the younger Bison.
“Having 14 freshmen on the team, I thought nerves were definitely going to be a factor, but everyone stayed really positive,” she said. “Our seniors and coaches have done a really great job preparing us for the game.”
“We have a great attitude and great team chemistry which will definitely be our most important qualities moving forward in our season,” team captain Braun said. “Now that we have the first game under our belts we can work on the little things like protecting our sticks and hopefully improve for our next game against Howard.”
The Bison hope to use their inspiration from this game against Howard tomorrow at 1:00 p.m.
