Lacrosse drops first game of the season
By Dain Smith
Rider women’s lacrosse’s four-game winning streak came to end on March 1, falling 17-9 to Oregon.
The Broncs drop to 4-1 on the season while the Ducks remain undefeated at 4-0 on the year.
Oregon started to strike first and started off with a 2-0 lead on Rider.
The Broncs were not fazed by the Ducks, as Rider retaliated with a goal from graduate student midfielder Kylee Garcia and Emily Wesoky to even the score at 2-2.
The Ducks scored two more goals, but Garcia made another to cut the lead to 4-3 at the end of the first quarter.
To start off the second, the Broncs evened the score with a goal from graduate student attacker Anna Devlin, who was assisted by junior attacker Selena Carrington.
Falling behind 5-4, Garcia completed a hat trick, then found redshirt freshman attacker and midfielder Maggie Hance to give Rider its first lead over Oregon leading the game 6-5.
Near closing the half, the Ducks scored four consecutive goals to lead the Broncs 9-7.
Starting the second half, things went down hill for the Broncs as the Ducks scored 4 goals, while holding Rider to none.
Oregon continued to crush Rider by scoring four goals in the fourth, Rider tried to come back with a Carrington and Garcia goal, but it was too late for the Broncs.
On a positive note, Garcia showed promise as the leader of this Rider team, outshooting her entire team 5-4, putting Garcia at 15 goals for the season.
Garcia said, “Obviously it’s not the outcome we expected, but I think we can learn so much from this game. I think the physicality was something new for us and we just have to learn from it and get stronger for the conference games.”
When asked about the game plan for the upcoming game against Old Dominion this is what Head Coach Evan Mager had to say.
“First step is to take a break. We have been playing a lot of lacrosse in a short period of time. We’re bruised, we’re tired and luckily we don’t have to play for over a week now so the first step is to take a break.”
Rider has a chance to get back on track on March 10 where the Broncs face Old Dominion at 12 p.m.
