The women’s lacrosse team had a record-setting season but ultimately failed to reach its first BIG EAST tournament. Emotions were high as the Golden Eagles watched Temple convincingly beat Georgetown 11-4 Saturday afternoon. Temple’s dominating victory shut the door on Marquette’s postseason hopes due to goal differential.
“It was pretty disappointing to watch,” head coach Meredith Black said. “We thought the game was going to be closer. There was a lot of tears shed because we felt like we didn’t get any benefit from our hard work.”
Marquette (7-10, 4-3 BIG EAST) set new program records for victories and conference wins. The team had a combined two BIG EAST wins the two previous years and had never surpassed five wins overall. Despite the lack of postseason play, Black believes the season was a success.
“Everything about it was record breaking, we accomplished a lot of goals and we put ourselves into position to be eligible to play in the tournament,” Black said. “A silly rule that’s not necessarily written in our best interest is not going to take away from the accomplishments we had.”
There were many individual standouts for the Golden Eagles this season. Junior attacker Julianna Shearer and sophomore midfielder Allison Lane both broke the previous single-season goal scoring record and finished in the top six in the conference. Shearer led the team in goals with 36 while also adding 22 caused turnovers. Amanda Bockniak led the BIG EAST in assists with 24 and Riley Hill was right behind her with 22.
Defensively, the team was led by senior midfielder Hayley Baas. The Cincinnati native led the team in caused turnovers with 28, good for second in the BIG EAST. Marquette’s two senior captains Kayce Haverstick and Elizabeth Goslee also contributed strong performances throughout the season.
Black was pleased with her teams’ growth throughout the season. The Golden Eagles lost a few games early on, but bounced back when it mattered during conference play.
“The best teams peak toward the end of the season, when the pressure gets a little bit higher,” Black said. “I think this team did that, they handled the pressure of the conference.”
One area the team worked on was their winning mentality. Previous years the team had struggled with believing they could compete in games. Black thought they did a better job at believing they could win any game. She was impressed with the spirit and energy of the team and the fight they had in each game.
“They kept fighting no matter what they did not let loses bring them down,” Black said. “They usually had a really positive response from a lost and picked it back up.”
The Golden Eagles will rejoin as a team in about a month for their first ever overseas trip. Marquette will compete in a series of exhibition games in Italy from June 6-16. Black said it will be a good experience for her players and the team will get a glimpse of how the team could play next year.
“It’ll be a good way to see what we are kind of looking at for next year,” she said. “They are obviously exhibition games and it will be fun but it’ll be good to use different combinations of players.”
