On a rainy North Field, the women’s lacrosse team lost an overtime heartbreaker 14-13 to Williams Saturday, continuing a streak of losses against the Ephs that stretches back to 1983. Finishing at 7-7, the Cards drew Bowdoin in the opening round of the NESCAC Tournament the next day. In Brunswick, they were unable to maintain consistent momentum and were mauled 13-6 in a season-ending loss.
On Saturday, the Ephs’ Rachel Barr started the game with a bang, putting Williams on the board just 42 seconds after the opening draw. She added a second score a couple of minutes later. After the birds evened the score, Williams took back the lead 3-2. Seconds later, Becca Vogel ’06 potted her second goal of the match, which sparked a three-goal run over the next five minutes, giving the Cards a 5-3 cushion. After Barr tallied twice more to knot the board again, Becky Meredith ’06 quickly re-opened the Wesleyan lead to 7-5. A last second goal by the Purple Cows left the Cardinals with a 7-6 halftime lead.
Meredith beat Williams net minder Ann Woods 90 seconds into the second half to create an 8-6 advantage, which soon became 9-7 after Vogel scored with 22:43 to go. The Cards did not score again for 19:43, during which time the Ephs ran off five unanswered tallies to gain a 12-9 edge. Finally, with three minutes remaining, Meredith ended the drought to make it 12-10. In the final thirty seconds of regulation, Vogel and Vanessa Jones ’05 each found daylight behind Woods to knot the game in a dramatic comeback effort to force overtime.
“We trusted each other in that last minute,” Meredith said. “We’ve had to come from behind all season and we knew we were capable of working to get the job done”
In the first extra session, the two teams traded scores, but Barr quickly beat Kate Jones ’06 to open the second period of overtime and then forced three Cardinal turnovers to seal a wild 14-13 match for the Ephs.
Meredith scored six times on the day and added an assist, a strong effort to close the season. Vogel ended her college career with a quartet of lamplighters and an assist to give her season totals of 52 goals and 9 assists for 61 points. Her goal and point totals are season records.
In the tournament game, the first half was fairly uneventful, marred by many turnovers by both sides. The first 20 minutes had a total of four goals scored, three of them by the Polar Bears. In the last ten minutes, Meredith tallied a pair of scores to make it 4-2, but Bowdoin beat Kate Jones one more time to make it 5-2 at the half.
The Bears extended their lead 44 ticks into the second half, but Vee Jones soon brought the birds back within three off a pass from Vogel, whose assist was the final point of her brilliant career. Less than a minute later, Taryn King’s goal set off a 6-0 Bowdoin run that took up nearly 14 minutes. Meredith netted her third tally of the day to bring the Cards within eight, at 12-4 with 13:10 remaining. Lauren Ogden ’07 added a score after another four minutes, but the Bears’ Jena Davis scored a goal of her own eight seconds later. Laura Siegle ’06 scored the final goal of the game with 6:30 to go.
“The team was tired from the day before and the travel,” Meredith said. “We were all in it, but they had us scouted really well. They didn’t out work us but they knew our plays, and their efforts to face guard Vogel really took our key player out of the game. We struggled to fill that void.”
Next year’s team will have to make up for some key graduations, most notably Vogel and Vee Jones. Vogel, a pre-season All-American, set season records for goals and points this year with respective totals of 52 and 61. For her career, she is Wesleyan’s all-time leading scorer with 176 lamplighters and 213 points. In Vee Jones, they lose a talented all-around player. For a defender, she displayed an excellent scoring touch, tallying 102 points for her career, seventh all time. She also played tenacious defense. One of the team’s unsung heroes over the last few years has been Katharine Needham ’05. Though she ends her career having never scored a point, she contributed in other ways that cannot be read on a score sheet. Needham played consistently every game and excelled at getting the ball out of the defensive zone.
Not to say that next year’s squad will lack talent. Meredith, who scored 35 goals this year and added 13 assists, returns with 113 career points so far, fourth on the all-time list. Siegle and Ogden and their all-around play return as well. Siegle tallied 15 scores and Ogden 11, totals that figure to increase as they will both play more pivotal roles. Also returning will be the speedy Jen Bianculli ’07 on defense. Vee Jones said early in the year that Bianculli was among the team’s fastest in transition. Kate Jones will return to mind the pipes.
“Hopefully some of the sophomore attack will be able to step up and fill the void left by graduation,” Meredith said. “We’ll have to learn how to play without our big senior leaders at both ends, but their presence this year has taught and meant a lot to everyone and hopefully it will carry over to next season.”
Next year should be interesting.
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