Women’s lacrosse faces Oregon looking to continue winning ways

With an 8-0 record, the Women of Troy have set a new program record for number of consecutive games won and the Trojans’ 17-4 victory against Dartmouth on Wednesday marked the team’s fifth double-digit win.

Next up, the Trojans take on Oregon at McAlister Field on Sunday afternoon.

With a No. 8 ranking, the team is looking to continue to assert their dominance with each game presenting a new opportunity to prove themselves.

“It’s a big mission of our team this year to not just show that we can win games but show that we can dominate games for a full 60 minutes,” junior attacker Michaela Michael said. “Last year we had a hard time doing that. We would come away with wins but they would be a lot closer than we wanted them to be.”

Michael has been a crucial member of the Trojan offense notching her 20th career hat trick against Dartmouth, scoring four goals and recording three assists. The offense has been a force to be reckoned with as the team has outscored their opponents 129-37 at this point in the season, averaging 11.5 goals per game.

“Offensively right now we have a number of different people who are being threats which is really great,” head coach Lindsay Munday said. “If someone isn’t having their best game, we have other people that can step up and really take charge and I think that’s been a great thing for our offense right now.” 

In addition to a powerful offense, the Women of Troy can attribute their success to a solid defense, holding their opponents to under ten goals in seven out of their eight games.

“The defense is playing phenomenal,” Munday said. “We’re really playing as a unit. They’ve been playing together now for three and four years so they communicate really well back there, they’re on the same page.”

However, even when the Trojans are winning by double digits, the girls look to focus on their goals and executing what they set out to do.

“In lacrosse, you can score goals really quickly so I don’t think we’re ever really comfortable with a lead,” Munday said. “Really we’re just trying to focus on us and make sure that no matter what the score is — whether we are up by 10 or down by 10 — that we are committing to the things that we want to do as a program so the score really doesn’t matter. We are always just trying to make sure that we are disciplined, focused and that we’re executing.” 

Against Oregon, the Trojans are 2-2, winning 13-11 in their last encounter in April 2015. With a current 6-3 record, the Ducks boast a powerful offense of their own featuring Bella Pyne, who has scored 18 goals this season and national assist leader Cambi Cukar, who has notched 30 assists.

“Oregon is a great team, they are very physical,” Munday said. “They can score goals really quickly. We found that out last year.”

Despite their success thus far in the season, the Trojans are never complacent and look to improve each time that they step out on the field.

“We definitely need to continue to get better,” Munday said. “That’s really been our motto from day one of this program. Every single day, we need to continue to get better both individually and collectively as well, so that motto has really never changed for us no matter how the season is going.”