This past weekend marked the first time in Jenny Graap’s ’86 seven-year career as head coach of the women’s lacrosse team that her squad lost its first game of the season. The Red (0-1) found itself down, 9-3, at the half to Georgetown (1-0), and never recovered, as the Hoyas recorded a 16-8 blowout win.
“They dominated in pretty much every facet of the game,” explained Graap. “We were kind of outmatched.”
Cornell struggled from the outset of the match, coming up with a yellow card in the first minute of play. The Hoyas took advantage and scored immediately.
After the Hoyas scored the first seven goals of the match, defender Lindsay Robinson garnered the Red’s first goal of the season for a much-needed momentum shift.
“Lindsay was a huge standout for us,” Graap said. “As a defender, the fact that she brought the ball down, took a shot, and scored was incredibly uplifting to the team. She also had several ground balls and a check and steal.”
By halftime, the score was already 9-3. The Red had a much stronger second half, scoring five goals and giving up only seven, but the team could not recover from its early deficit.
“For us, I think the biggest frustration of all is giving up that many goals,” Graap said. “Giving up 16 goals is more than we normally give up. It speaks to the fact that we made some defensive errors [and] we have some maturing to do on the defensive end.”
Cornell lost several seniors to graduation this past year and has a much younger team than it has in previous years. However, whether or not the freshman jitter factor was at play here is certainly up for debate, especially considering that freshman Lindsay Moore garnered two of the Red’s eight goals.
“Last year is far behind us,” Graap said. “I don’t think losing all those seniors had anything to do with the outcome. We just really needed to be strong fundamentally and we just weren’t.”
Archived article by Michael Pandolfini