Junior Abigial Snively chases a Illinois Weselyan defender
as she attempts to clear the ball out of the Titan's defensive half.
DePauw left the Titan's in the dust with a 24-8 win.
SAM CARAVANA / THE DEPAUW
The women’s lacrosse team pummeled Illinois Wesleyan University 24-8 on Wednesday night to win their fifth game of the 2015 season making history at DePauw Univeristy. In 2014 the team finished its season with three wins after a total of 13 games while in 2013, the team’s first season as a varsity sport, finished with four wins.
"It's awesome to know that we're still building the foundation for what DePauw lacrosse can be," said sophomore Kelli Peterson. "Also it's been great even just in the past two seasons to see how much our hard work has allowed us to improve as a team and really compete with the big teams in our conference."
However, the team was challenged from the start on Wednesday, senior Carey Kunz said.
“In the first few minutes of the game, where we were unable to get settled on attack and play our game,” Kunz said. “It was very back and forth for a while until we finally got collected, won the draws and worked the ball around.”
Despite the time it took the women to get settled, DePauw dominated the game in every aspect. The Tigers outshot the Titans 39-17, picked up 30 ground balls to the Titans 22 and had 22 draw controls while the Titans only controlled 12.
First-year Emma Flynn led the team with six goals while senior Carey Kunz put away four scores of her own. Totaling 24 goals many different women on the team had the chance to score.
Even though DePauw never trailed behind the Titans they were still challenged.
“It was a challenge for us to focus especially down on the attacking end on our fundamentals,” Flynn said. “We just get too excited sometimes and start to drop our passes, but we definitely know how to pull it together.”
The Tigers showed their strength by winning the majority of the draw controls to help them take advantage on offense, but this wasn’t the only area that the Tigers outshined the Titans.
“Winning draw controls, being the first ones to the ground balls, and having clean transitions in the midfield from offense to defense was crucial in helping us beat Illinois Wesleyan,” Kunz said. “Our quick [ability to] defend after they scored worked well in causing turnovers.”
The team worked together having 13 women contribute to scoring goals while 10 assisted goals. Sophomore goalie Liz Hawkins totaled six saves in the victory.
Next up for the Tigers is their third North Coast Athletic Conference game of the season when they face will be the College of Wooster on Sunday where the team hopes to show how much they’ve improved.
“We are really excited to try and come out and show Wooster and the rest of the conference that we are here to win and can give any team a run for their money,” Flynn said.