Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 5/5/10
Mercy College (N.Y.) freshman Lauren Mateja (Upper Merion) was named the East Coast Conference Goalkeeper of the Week.
The Mavericks won both games this past week, beating Wilmington, 10-9, and St. Thomas Aquinas, 18-8. In the two games, Mateja made a combined 20 saves with a .541 save percentage. She allowed just 8.5 goals per game.
Against Wilmington, she made 12 saves, several of which were stuffs in front of the crease. She then made eight stops against STAC.
This is the second time Mateja has earned this award. She also claimed the honor on March 8.
The Mavericks are 8-5 on the season, and 3-3 in the ECC, and in fifth place. Mathematically, Mercy still has an outside chance to make the ECC Championships, where only the top four teams qualify. Mercy concludes its inaugural season on Wednesday by hosting Molloy at 4 p.m.
Editor’s note:
Lauren Mateja, a freshman goalie at Mercy College, has been blogging all season as the Mustangs play in their first season of lacrosse. As part of a joint project with Mercy College, Phillylacrosse.com, has been posting her blogs
May 3, 2010
With less than a week of lacrosse left, the season has really come down to the wire. Practices have become a reflection of what we’ve done in the past, with the focus on improving our weaknesses in preparation for the biggest game of the season.
Another great win for us came against Wilmington on March 27. We led for most of the game, keeping a one-goal lead up until the 45th minute mark. With 18 minutes to go, the Wildcats went on a 6-1 scoring drive. Eventually, with 5:43 left, Wilmington took the lead. Thankfully, Steph, Kelsey and Brianna scored in the final 5 minutes to take back the lead and save the victory. Overcoming Wilmington after a huge loss to C.W. Post felt awesome. Yet again the defense played amazing, and I felt like this game was even more important than any other to back up their performance. I had a pretty great game—12 saves, 9 GA, 5 GBs. It definitely feels good to have a rhythm back in my games. Giving up huge leads to Dowling and C.W. Post damaged my personal confidence a little, but a win like this one against Wilmington really helped to gain it all back.
Following our come-from-behind win at home, we traveled across the Hudson to face St. Thomas Aquinas. During the game, we never relinquished a lead, completely dominating STAC. For the second game in a row, I’m incredibly proud of how everyone played. Defense was solid yet again, and offense controlled the pace of the game. I think I turned in another good performance against the Spartans with 8 GA and 10 saves. Clears were also much better this game than compared to Wilmington.
During the weekend, I decided to take advantage of the absolutely beautiful weather and met up with one of my best friends from high school in the city. Although I’ve been to NYC quite a few times since beginning at Mercy, I never really got the opportunity to walk around Central Park. After finding the Balto statue and wandering past the boathouse, we toured the Met to escape the heat. After a good few hours in the museum, we hopped on the subway and walked through Times Square to visit some stores there. Seeing all of the people in a relatively small area was unbelievable. It’s hard to put the sight in words…while it’s a bit overwhelming, it’s also comforting. Spending time with Emma helped my sanity too—studying for tests and writing essays gets to be quite a burden on the mind! Needless to say, I took tons of pictures on our little adventure.
The next few days are going to be extremely intense—with the biggest game of the season on Wednesday, we all want Mercy’s inaugural season to go out with a bang.
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