The Cornell women’s lacrosse team began its season with six consecutive victories, but it suffered its first two defeats in tight games against No. 3 North Carolina and UPenn over spring break. The Red began play with a 15-13 victory over Albany, its sixth of the season. It then lost to the Tar Heels (6-3, 1-0 America East), 11-10, and lost to the Quakers, (4-3, 3-0 Ivy League), 12-11. According to senior defenseman Kate Ivory, the Red suffered from slow starts in the two losses.“Over spring break, we came out pretty flat and started off pretty bad. Its good that we can be confident in our comebacks and know that we can do that, but in some sense, it’s hurting us, because we’re not playing a full 60 minutes,” she said. “Our focus moving forward is going to be playing a full 60 minutes and not getting ourselves in a situation where we need to dig ourselves out of a hole.”In the game against Albany, the Red was trailing by two goals with 10 minutes left in the game, but it scored five straight goals to take the lead. This was one of multiple comeback victories that the Red has had this season. According to Ivory, the team’s “never-give-up” attitude has helped it succeed.“It’s really great that we have that attitude this year — that we know if we’re down, we can come back,” she said. Another feature of the victory over the Great Danes was scoring with many different players. According to senior attack Caroline Salisbury, having multiple scoring threats makes it difficult for opponents to shut Cornell’s offense down.“In lacrosse, they look to shut down the best player, but when you have four or five great players they can’t really do that,” she said. The Red had a three goal lead late in the second half against the Tar Heels, but UNC answered with four consecutive goals to take the victory. According to Ivory, UNC played a stellar final 15 minutes, and the Red failed to adequately respond.“We definitely had the momentum, but UNC is a very good team and they came out really strong in the end, winning the draws and attacking the ball,” she said. “They pressured us really hard, and we just didn’t handle the pressure as well as we should have been able to.”The following game against the Quakers was a back-and-forth contest, with Penn scoring seven consecutive goals to take a large early lead and Cornell responding with a seven goal streak of its own to ultimately send the game into overtime. The Quakers converted on the man-advantage in overtime, and the Red was unable to respond to force a second overtime. “I’m a senior, and my class hasn’t beaten Penn in my four years, so it was a really emotional game for us. We unfortunately came out really flat in the first half,” she said. “We were able to use our confident attitude to get back into the game, but you’re not gonna win if you don’t play a full 60 minutes.”According to Salisbury, the Red will focus on improving its play at the beginning of the game moving forward.“I think our focus for Princeton coming up is to start the game strong, take the lead, and play more of an even game rather than having to dig ourselves out of a hole,” she said.
Original Author: Ben Horowitz