The New Paltz women’s lacrosse team concluded its season with a loss to State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) rival No. 19 The College at Brockport by a score of 20-2 on Saturday, April 29.
Prior to the game, the Hawks honored and celebrated the careers of fourth-year co-captains Melissa Wagner, Nicole Petrullo and Nicole Gottschalk, fourth-year attacker Nicole Stackpole and fourth-year midfielder Alexa Criollo for Senior Day.
With the loss, New Paltz finished its season 5-8, which was its best record since 2012 (7-10).
Hawks interim head coach Keith Detelj said that despite the loss, the team put everything they had on the field and that the unity among the team never wavered.
“Our game plan for Brockport worked for 10-15 minutes, but Brockport is a well-oiled machine,” Detelj said. “Physically, it just wasn’t a good matchup. Brockport was going for an undefeated season [in conference] so it wasn’t a game they took lightly.”
The Hawks jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the first half after first-year midfielder Jennifer O’Leary and third-year attacker Caitlyn Morris each lit the lamp.
After the early lead, however, Brockport came out guns blazing and scored 20 unanswered goals.
Brockport second-year midfielder Hannah Cullen and fourth-year attacker Kelly Wall each recorded a hat trick for the Golden Eagles, while second-year midfielder Heather Conklin chipped in four more.
The Golden Eagles outshot the Hawks (30-8), outscored them in draw controls (18-5), went 10-for-10 in clears and matched them in ground balls (18-18).
Detelj said that he was impressed with how the girls played this season and saw a huge improvement from 2016.
“Our program is going in the right direction and they are hungry,” Detelj said. “The team learned that big swings of momentum happen at the collegiate level, but they continued to get better every day which was fun to watch.”
Detelj concluded that he likes the fact that they started to figure out the other teams and that it’s not going to be easy coming to New Paltz in the future.
“It’s going to be fun to see what we will do,” Detelj said. “We will bring a couple more people onto the roster and the rest of the team are coming into their own. I hope we don’t plateau and keep getting better.”