The DePauw women's lacrosse team traveled to Meadville, Penn. last Saturday for the first time in program history.
The team faced off against the Allegheny College Gators and lost the match 26-4. This puts the tigers at 6-4 on the season, playing 6-1 in the conference.
"We haven't shown up to play a lot of our games," women's lacrosse team head coach Susanna Wilcox said. "If you look at the stats for a lot of our games, including conference games, it's pretty even. It just comes down to a difference in shots. The pieces are there in practice but there's something that's not translating onto the field."
Throughout the entire game, Allegheny led DePauw with shots on goal; the Gators with 36 attempts and the tigers trailing with only 15.
This was DePauw's sixth loss in a row and the team still has yet to win a game since entering conference play. The team won its first four non-conference games of the season.
The team has a grueling schedule, making it difficult to translate drills in practice to games against much tougher teams in the conference.
"The way our conference schedule is structured makes it tough because you can't play many non-conference games, get more confident with a win, then hopefully translate that the confidence into our conference games," Wilcox said. "Because we have had a mid-week and a weekend game since conference play began, we don't have the opportunity for that to translate."
Senior attack Natalie Swiler led DePauw tallying two goals, bringing her season total up to 32 goals. Behind her was freshman attack Elizabeth McCracken with a single goal and sophomore midfielder Jamie Powell with one goal and an assist on McCracken's point.
"I thought that our three midfielders [Jamie Powell, Carey Kunz and Knubbe Kunz] hustled all over the field but you can't just have three players sprint up the field the whole time and rely on that," Wilcox said.
On the opposition, the Gators were led by sophomore midfielder Kelsey Rodger's six goals, followed by the four goals and three assists tallied by junior attack Kelly Dickson.
The team put in hard preparation to face Allegheny but fell short while the clock ran, but DePauw has a chance to win against Mount St. Joseph College in their final non-conference game. Wilcox looks to tune the little mistakes to pull out a win on Wednesday.
"Our biggest struggle was just the little things, like not letting a one or two goal deficit become an 8 goal deficit," Wilcox said. "We didn't do a good job capitalizing on the possession that we did have. We won a fairly equal amount of draw controls, but we weren't converting that into shots. And if you don't shoot than you're not going to win."