Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 4/20/10
Editor’s Note: Mercy College (N.Y.) freshman goalie Lauren Mateja (Upper Merion) has been blogging since the start of the season. In cooperation with Mercy College, Phillylacrosse.com is posting her regular blogs.
It’s Been a While…
April 18, 2010
Ever since my last entry, I’ve been swamped with research papers and midterms. Sometimes balancing lacrosse, schoolwork, sleep and a social life gets unbelievably difficult. I always feel like I’m playing catch-up with something, whether it be sleeping or writing. Time management has become extremely important skill for me in college!!
Since our 21-5 romp over Lancaster Bible, we’ve collected a 2 and 2 record. Two wins come against the other two inaugural programs of the East Coast Conference, and two losses against two established programs.
In the first of the last four games in conference play, we outscored Queens 20-11. The key to the game there was possession—we absolutely dominated them in offensive time. Specifically, we jumped out to a 7-0 lead by the 17th minute, and only allowed them five shots on cage in the first half. They played with a ton of vigor in the second half, though, but our lead was way too strong for any sort of Knights comeback.
The second game is a heartbreaker to talk about. It’s the second time this season we’ve fell to an opponent with about 30 seconds to go. Our loss against Seton Hill is incredibly tough to take, especially since it was a conference game. Granted, our team had an amazing showing. Coach warned the offense that the Griffons’ starting keep was pretty good, but we were able to effectively place our shots around her and her 2nd half replacement. We’ve learned that we can really put an established team on their heels and achieve more than anyone ever expected us to.
Our third game in the same time span found us facing the #9 team in Division II, Dowling College. Despite what the scoreboard says, the defense in front of me played extraordinarily. They were able to force Dowling to wait for their cutters and have to reset plays. On the offensive side, Brianna Horn had an amazing game with 5 goals, three coming back-to-back with under 10 minutes left in the game. I definitely feel as if I let them down with a 6-save performance though—if I could have saved another few shots, our morale would have been totally different during the game.
Still, coming off the 2-loss streak into a home game versus Lake Erie put a little fire in us. We knew they had a pretty strong one-two punch with Julia Kudla and Meredith Howe, so the key to the game would be shutting them down. We successfully held them to only 5 goals total, with three of those goals coming off free-positions.
Again, the defense played phenomenally. We ran with them in the midfield and prevented them from completing half of their clears. I definitely am excited with my performance this game. According to the boxscore, I was .500 on the day, with 3 GBs. This really helped me get some confidence back after the losses against Seton Hill and Dowling.
Even though it’s going to be another tough game on Wednesday at C.W. Post, I’m really looking forward to seeing how we compete against the #2 team in the country.
