The AU women’s lacrosse team was hoping to send its seniors out with a victory in the regular season home finale against Lafayette. But the Leopards opened up a four-goal second-half lead and fought off an AU comeback to defeat the Eagles 13-12 on Senior Day April 7.
Kaska Komosinski, Paige Lin, Bernadette Maher, Lauren Schoenberger and Emily Stankiewicz were the five AU seniors honored prior to the game.
Stankiewicz, Schoenberger and Lin accounted for seven of the team’s 12 goals on the afternoon. Lin and Schoenberger tossed in two, and Stankiewicz tied for the team-high with Kimberly Collins with three.
Komosinski played 60 minutes in goal and registered eight saves.
“The seniors have a real passion for the game, and a passion for the team,” AU Head Coach Laura Campbell said. “It’s their passion that translates to the rest of the team, and that’s where the whole team’s heart comes from.”
The Eagles (7-6, 3-2 PL) started off strong, scoring the game’s first two goals five minutes into play.
Lafayette (9-5, 2-2 PL) quickly answered, knocking home two of its own in what was a back-and-forth first half early on.
Later, with her team facing its largest deficit of the opening half at 7-4, Stankiewicz scored to cut the Leopard lead to 7-5 and give the Eagles some momentum heading into halftime.
Kimberly Collins picked up where Stankiewicz left off, scoring two goals within 45 seconds of each other to knot the game at 7-7.
Following Collins’ back-to-back scores, the AU offense went cold, falling into a scoring drought that lasted over 15 minutes. Lafayette took advantage, scoring four times to take an 11-7 lead with 12 minutes to play.
“The biggest thing was we just needed to tell the girls to relax,” Campbell said. “Maybe it being Senior Day, there was a little bit of emotion today, and we needed to keep that in check.”
The Eagles outscored Lafayette 5-1 after the timeout, with Emily Maher’s goal tying the game at 12 with 4:03 to play.
But Lafayette’s Addie Godfrey, who is among the nation’s leaders in goals scored, netted her fourth goal of the day to put the Leopards ahead 13-12 with 1:30 left.
The Eagles showed the same resiliency that helped them come back earlier by regaining possession late. Collins launched the potential game-tying shot just feet away from the goal with 23 seconds left, but Meghan Curtin saved the goal and game for Lafayette.
“It just didn’t end up coming out as we wanted to in the end,” Stankiewicz said. “It wasn’t our game, we weren’t playing to our highest potential that we possibly can.”
The Eagles will now look to clinch a spot in the Patriot League Tournament when they travel to Annapolis, Md., for their PL finale with conference-leading Navy April 13.
“For Navy, I think we’re just looking on playing our game,” Stankiewicz said. “We’re not focusing on them at all … we’re just going to focus on our game.”
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