After four weeks of practice, the DePauw men's lacrosse team traveled on Saturday to face Wilmington College of Ohio in its first game of the 2013 spring season and their first game as a varsity team. The DePauw Tigers lost 8-6 to the Wilmington Quakers, another first-year team.
Head coach Carl Haas told the Tigers to go out and play as hard as they could.
"We knew there would be mistakes but we wanted the effort to be 100 percent," Haas said. "Without having any outside competition before this game we didn't have a chance to see where we were at, so we just wanted them to play hard."
The team took Haas's words to heart, gaining control of the face off and going straight for the goal. With nine minutes left in the first quarter, junior attacker Sam Johnson obtained the ball and took it to goal, scoring the first goal of the game.
The team ran the ball on offense, creating ball movement, and most feeds came out of the left side creating opportunities for the team to score. The team worked out of one offensive formation throughout the game.
Senior Logan Patterson, a defensive player, said the team had a lot of passing on offense, but lost chances to score because the team is still growing.
"If we can be more consistent with our passes we'll continue to create better scoring opportunities," Patterson said.
The score stayed low throughout the game as the Wilmington Quakers dominated on offense, but the DePauw Tigers held their ground only losing by two goals.
Junior goalie J.R. Strubbe saved nine out of 17 shots on goal helping the Tigers to keep the game close.
Haas said the team executed individual defense well, an area they have been focusing on in practice. This week, however, the team will be focusing on working as a unit and utilizing all the defensive players.
"This first game showed a lot of potential for the men to succeed and was an eye opener for many as to what they need to improve on," said Haas. "We're going to take a few steps back and focus on the small issues. We need to go back to the fundamentals: passing and catching, working on communication and two-on-one offensive situations."
The last goal, scored again by Johnson, was the cleanest and encompassed what the team has worked on in practice, said Haas. The offense shared the ball, moved it around quickly and found the backside of the fan was open creating a final chance to score.
Senior captain Chris Wright saw the team play hard leaving nothing on the field, but knows there are skills the team needs to work on.
"We made some mistakes on the little things, but we went out there and gave it our all," Wright said. "We just need to play smarter in the future."