After starting the season with two victories, the Lacrosse team has lost five of their last six games for a 3-5 overall record.
Despite not having a winning record, Head Coach Liz Student said she sees positive results this season because the team is continuing to improve.
“This season is going in the direction that we want,” Student said. “Every day, we continually get better. With the practice planning and the games we’ve played, we want to continually grow throughout the season.”
Third-year attack player Talia Tesler said she is proud of how her team is solidifying as one unit, even though they have faced challenges during the past few games.
“We’ve had some rough games, but I’m pretty proud of the way that everyone’s coming together,” Tesler said. “This is my third year and it seems more like a team aspect, which is good. Everyone’s playing off of each other a lot better than any other season so far.”
Student emphasized consistency as something the team can improve upon, since this is only her second year as head coach of a relatively young team.
“We’re just working more on consistency,” Student said. “I started last year, so we’re kind of still switching philosophies and making some changes. We’re still working on our foundation and making sure that we build that strong foundation now, that way we’ll have it in a couple of years, and it will be a little bit easier.”
Second-year midfielder Lianne Valdvia said learning how to play with adversity will be an important lesson to help the team improve this season.
“We’re in a really tough conference, we had the most teams in any conference go to the tournament last year,” Valdvia said. “We’re going to be down in some games, but we have to learn how to win from that.”
Student is happy that the scoring on the team is spread out among the players, with the goalie contributing on the defensive end, she said.
“If you look at our stats, it’s great because so many different people score,” Student said. “We don’t just have one or two kids that can find the back of the net, the ball’s spread all over the field. That starts with our goalie who has done an awesome job, making some great saves. She’s the best goalie that this program has ever had.”
Tesler said the team has been trying to take advantage of each player’s strengths to become stronger on both the defensive and offensive ends.
“We’ve been talking about how certain people are good at certain things, and we want to capitalize on people’s strengths,” Tesler said. “We’re going to work on offensively getting people where they need to be to most benefit the team and defensively, just more high-pressure defense against our opponents.”
Student said her expectations for the rest of the season are to win some games that they didn’t win last year.
“My expectations are that we pick up a couple of wins that we didn’t have last year,” Student said. “Obviously we want to win every game, but I just want to make sure that we are playing the hardest and the best lacrosse that we can play.”
The Lady Hawks will look to earn another win on Thursday, April 11 at Ramapo College.
The Hawks return home on Saturday, April 13 in a SUNYAC match-up against the College at Brockport on the Turf Field at 1 p.m.