SBU Sports: Women’s lacrosse powers past William & Mary on Senior Day
The No. 6 women’s lacrosse team (10-3, 5-0 CAA) controlled both ends of the field en route to a 20-6 victory over William & Mary (7-7, 3-2 CAA) on Senior Day at LaValle Stadium on April 15.
The Seawolves’ offense saw eight different goal scorers and five different hat tricks. Junior midfielder Ellie Masera led the way with four goals while seniors Kailyn Hart, Morgan Mitchell and Charlotte Verhulst and junior Jaden Hampel all recorded three goals. Graduate Kelsi LoNigro added a pair of goals.
Stony Brook struck first with a goal by Mitchell off an assist from senior Erin MacQuarrie. The Tribe did not stay silent for long as they answered back with a goal of their own with 11:55 left to play in the first quarter. William & Mary found the back of the cage for a second time within the next three minutes to take a 2-1 lead.
With 8:47 remaining in the first quarter, Hart scored her first goal of the contest to tie the contest at 2-2. Hampel and Verhulst added a goal each to give the squad a 4-2 lead heading into the quarter break. The Seawolves got off to a hot start in the second quarter, with MacQuarrie and Mitchell scoring back-to-back goals.
The second quarter was all Stony Brook as it added eight more goals throughout the remaining 13 minutes to head into halftime with a 14-3 lead. The Seawolves went on to outscore the Tribe 6-3 in the second half of the contest to run away with the 20-6 victory.
Prior to the game, the Seawolves honored their senior class, which is comprised of Kira Accettella, Ella Whitehouse, Kailyn Hart, Morgan Mitchell, LoNigro, MacQuarrie, McKenzie Mitchell, Haley Dillon, Lindsay Rongo, Lexie Correia, Shana Hecht, Hailey Duchnowski, and Verhulst.
“Senior Day is always an emotional day. I thought our players did a really good job of funneling their emotions of Senior Day festivities into another dominating conference win. For us, rebounding off a really poor performance at Rutgers Wednesday night, it was good for us to be able to play a few days later and get back on the horse a little bit. I love the senior class, it is a special group to me, they’ve been here a while. I think a bunch of them are going to wind up coming back, but they have made a tremendous impact on our program,” said head coach Joe Spallina.
“We have never moved the ball quite like we did today, and there were a lot of assisted goals today. It was great to get an assisted game into our books and be less of a dodging team. I think today really helped us,” said senior midfielder Charlotte Verhulst.
“I think today we were just, as a whole today, all in sync. We had assisted goals, dodging goals, free position goals and I think just as a whole we were in sync with each other,” said senior attacker Morgan Mitchell.
The team is back in action on April 22, when they travel to Towson, Md. to take on Towson. Face-off is set for 12 p.m. and the game will be broadcast live on FloLive.
