The women’s lacrosse team traveled to Sewanee University last week and came home with a pair of victories over Tennessee universities. They then followed it up with a conference victory over Hiram College on Saturday.
DePauw did not give Birmingham Southern College a chance in the first game as they scored the first six goals of the game within seven minutes. Junior Emma Flynn led the charge with two for those goals, while senior Nicole Gibson assisted on three of them.
Birmingham Southern gave a push in the late first half with three straight goals to cut the Tigers’ lead to 8-4. However, the women matched them with three goals by senior Taylor Summers, first-year Sydney Blake and sophomore Maddi Stern.
The team continued to dominate in the second half as they outscored the Panthers 7-2 to start the half. Birmingham Southern ended the game on a 6-2 run, but the game was already put away and the Tigers won 20-13.
DePauw’s second matchup against the hosting team of Sewanee was a nail-biter until the end.
Sewanee started the game with a 2-1 lead, but DePauw bounced back and scored three goals behind Flynn and Summers to take a 4-2 lead. With only 27 seconds remaining in the half, Sewanee went on a quick run and scored two goals in the final seconds to tie the game up at 4-4 heading into halftime.
Sewanee struck first in the second half, but the women quickly retook the lead with a 4-1 run to make the score 8-6 with 4:07 left to go in the game. Sewanee was able to cut into the lead with another goal, but that was all they could muster as the Tigers won with a final score of 9-7.
Flynn led the Tigers with five goals, while Gibson contributed the most assists with three.
Sophomore Rachel Allen says it was a goal of the team to win both games on their trip, and she was happy they were able to achieve that.
“It was really great to come away with two wins on our spring break trip because that is not something we have been able to do in the past,” Allen said. “We also played hard as a team for all 60 minutes which is something that is going to be important going into conference games.”
The team finally returned home on Saturday to take on Hiram in a North Coast Athletic Conference matchup.
With the game still up in the air with 20 minutes to go in the first half, DePauw rattled off nine straight goals to end the half to take a 13-2 lead. Flynn, Summers, and first-year Sarah Ramsey all scored multiple goals during the stretch.
The women kept the momentum going in the second half as they opened the gate with an additional six straight goals. The team continued to dominate all the way through and won by a score of 25-4.
Summers scored four goals, Flynn and Ramsey scored three, and Blake and sophomores Olivia Miller and Erica Rapelje each scored a pair.
Rapelje thinks that one of the qualities of the team that led to the victory was the sharing of the ball amongst each other.
“We played as one cohesive unit and it was awesome to see everyone come together,” Rapelje said. “Every single player on attack scored in that game, which just shows our willingness to work as a team to achieve our goals and share our success with each other.”
The wins improve the team’s overall record to 5-2 and NCAC record to 1-1. The team is back in action on Saturday as they host Kenyon College at 2:30.