The Northwestern lacrosse team proved Thursday you don’t have torespect your elders, as it defeated senior-laden Notre Dame 10-8 inthe first round of the NCAA Championships.
The Fighting Irish (12-5) may have been more experienced, witheight seniors and a 2002 trip to the tournament quarterfinals. Butwith eight freshmen on its roster and no postseason experience, NU(15-2) overcame a first-half deficit to prove that teamwork trumpsseniority.
“It’s hard to stop our team when everyone’s working so welltogether,” freshman Kristen Kjellman said.
The game was the Wildcats’ first playoff appearance since areturn to varsity status three years ago. They advanced to thequarterfinals for only the second time in the team’s history.
The Cats will travel to Charlottesville, Va., on Sunday to meetsecond seeded Virginia, which had no problem finishing off Mt. St.Mary’s 19-2 on Thursday in first-round action.
“Today’s game was a great effort,” coach Kelly Amonte Hillersaid. “We came out a little tentative, but we really took it tothem in the second half.”
The Cats defeated Notre Dame 9-5 on April 20, but postseasonjitters may have caused them to start slowly Thursday. NU fellbehind 2-0 and ended the first half trailing Notre Dame6-4.�
But freshman Aly Josephs notched the second half’s opening goalfor the third time in five games. She scored again to tie the gameand set the tone as NU aggressively attacked the goal on thefield’s North end.
“This side is our side,” Josephs said. “I feel like we’re asecond-half team.”
NU fans’ cheers of “Let’s go Cats” quickly drowned out NotreDame fans’ calls of “Defense” following Josephs’ goals.
After junior Sarah Albrecht netted the go-ahead goal with lessthan 14 minutes to go in the game, the NU defense relentlesslycleared the defensive zone. Goaltender Ashley Gersuk kept theFighting Irish out of the game by allowing only two goals in thesecond half.
“Ashley Gersuk came up huge for us today, ” Amonte Hiller said.”We tried to pressure (Notre Dame) to make her job easier, but whenwe needed her, she came up big time.”
Freshman Kristen Kjellman who tied the game at eight, had threegoals and one assist, extending her scoring streak to 17 games.Sophomore Laura Glassanos added three goals while Josephs andAlbrecht each netted two goals.
After NU’s 10-9 double-overtime loss to Vanderbilt on May 6,Amonte Hiller said she hoped her team would learn from the loss,only its second all season.
The Cats fell behind against Vanderbilt, and their comeback fellshort in overtime. But against Notre Dame, the Cats never lookedback after grabbing the lead in the second half.
“We learned a lot from the Vandy game,” Courtney Koester said.”We’ve never been in that kind of game with such repercussions, soit was definitely a learning experience.”
