Max Felsenstein
The Drew University women’s lacrosse team continued their season this past weekend with a game against Catholic, which they dropped 19-5, making their record for the season 5-4 and 0-1 in conference play.
While a tough loss to open conference play, the Rangers had strong contributions from Allie Didario (‘20) and Lauren Cassella (‘21) who scored two goals apiece. Charly Nolting (‘21) added another goal to the tally.
On the season, the Rangers have equaled their opponents, scoring 100 goals, averaging 25.4 shots per game, and shooting 43.9%. While the team is still young, having just four players graduating before 2020, there is a lot of optimism on this blossoming conference underdog.
“Our team is doing an awesome job at motivating each other and staying together as a unit,” midfielder Jenna Morelli (‘20) said. “After a couple of tough losses, it’s easy to start pointing fingers and blaming each other, but our team has grown stronger and more unified through this adversity.”
While Drew falls to the bottom of the Landmark Conference after the conference game and Catholic ascends to the top, Morelli said, “I think that our loss to Catholic will motivate us to work harder and play better in our upcoming games. Adversity reveals character, we’ve experienced tough losses before and have responded well, we just have to keep up the hard work.”
Captain Sage Johnson (‘18) continues on with the season, while captain Nicole Kinney (‘18) has been sidelined with an ACL injury. Cassella leads the team with 42 points, shooting above with an impressive 70%.
The team has also had strong contributions from upperclassmen Mia Campanale (‘19), Mady Griswold (‘20), Mackenzie Hascup (‘20), Barbara Moukoulis (‘21) and Damaris Zola (‘21). While still early in conference play, the Rangers are getting acquainted with playing together.
“Communication is such a key part to this game on all sides of the field. We need to work on this part of our game because our talent is there, we just need to concentrate on communicating to be sure we put each other in the right positions for the team to be successful,” Morelli said. “In practice we’ve been emphasizing the importance of this and actively working on gelling with each other so talking on the field becomes muscle memory.”
Returning from their loss against Catholic, the Rangers beat Old Westbury on Thursday, March 29 at home, demolishing their opponents with a final score of 19-0.
