On a cloudy, windy Wednesday afternoon, the Rowan women’s lacrosse team put together one of its most dominant performances of the season as conference play heats up, with a 16-6 rout of the Stockton Ospreys.
Going into Wednesday’s matchup, Stockton had an astounding 13-1 Record. They are considered one of the best teams in the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) alongside TCNJ, but this didn’t phase the 4-9 Profs going into the game, as coach Lindsay Delaney considers this an expectation as a result of their tough early-season schedule.
“Our opponents are so strong that we were going up against,” Delaney said. “Our non-conference schedule is so strong that, where we lack is where they’d jump on. They’d make adjustments at halftime and our players would be startled by those adjustments, so I don’t think it’s that we did anything different this time, it’s that the weight of our schedule allows us to play better going into the second half.”
Rowan got on the board first with Elaina Corson scoring her first of five goals on the day to put the Profs up early in the first. Both teams exchanged goals before Stockton went on a run and scored three goals to go up 4-2. Molly Green was able to put one through the net with two seconds left in the first quarter to cut the deficit to one.
Corson and Green took over offensively for the Profs during the second quarter, with both of them tallying two goals during the period and the Profs regaining the lead for good. Green’s third goal of the game didn’t just give the Profs the lead, but it was her 100th career goal.
“It was nice,” Green said. “I wanted to get it against a competitive team, I knew this game was gonna be rough so to get it out of the way was nice.”
“I think it’s one of the hardest earned 100th goals I’ve seen in a long time,” Delaney added. “I’m not surprised, like I said I think she’s phenomenal on all three ends. She doesn’t get a break, we don’t sub her out. Everything stems from her defensive performance.”
With it being a 7-6 battle going into the third quarter, the Profs completely took control and made it a battle no more by preventing Stockton from doing anything offensively, alongside domination on the offensive side with nine goals in the second half. Green finished with six goals in the game to go along with Corson’s five. Fiona Lockhart tallied two of her own, while Calista Burke, Trish Gillen, and Hannah Lombardo each registered one.
Stellar goalkeeping from Mel Rodgers helped keep the Ospreys’ offense at bay and as the half went on, Rowan continued to take advantage of sloppy mistakes and turn them into goals of their own.
“As a defense as a whole, we needed to adjust,” Rodgers said. “Getting on our feet, I feel like we were just hanging back a little bit. We really didn’t like that so that’s when we decided like, ‘Hey like we really need to step up.’ And after that, I talked to my coach and I was like, ‘Hey, I need to fix something. I need an adjustment here, there.’ And she gave me the advice I needed to stop the shot that was coming my way.”
“We just had to stay composed with our attacking,” Green added. “We were taking a lot of their bait as far as feeding inside when it wasn’t as open as it could have been. Defensively I know Mel (Rodgers) made an adjustment that really helped us, and on defense, we were just playing as a unit, but I think that the biggest change was our ability to finish in the attack during the second half.”
This win continues an undefeated start to conference play after their recent win over Kean, and with a win this big against a talented team like Stockton, team morale couldn’t be higher heading into the late stretch of the regular season.
“We dropped a lot of close games, but I think that you either win or you learn and we had a lot of learning to do and I think that is really showcasing now and I think NJAC play is the best time for us to be able to showcase that,” Green said.
The Profs look to continue their underrated start to NJAC play this Saturday when they head to Mahwah to face off against Ramapo at 1 p.m.
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