After a positive 4-2 start, the Quinnipiac women’s lacrosse team hit a brick wall, losing its last three games. The Braves were outscored 55-18 during the road trip against Albany (14-6), Mt. St. Mary’s (15-6), and UMBC (26-6), with very few positives to build on heading into a difficult final stretch of the season.
At Albany, the Braves were down 10-0 just 18 minutes into the game. By the time the team woke up, it was too late to mount a serious comeback. The closest they would get was 12-6 with 15 minutes remaining before Albany tacked on two additional goals and put the game out of reach for good. Quinnipiac’s six goals came courtesy of sophomore Christina Nockunas (3), freshman Annie Paquette (2) and junior Marta Waldron (1).
Believing it couldn’t get much worse than their performance in New York, the Braves traveled to Maryland in hopes of rebounding with a win against a struggling Mt. St. Mary’s team. The Mountaineers, however, had other plans.
Once again, it seemed like the young Braves team was significantly affected by the travel as they were slow to start for the second straight game, falling behind 5-0 just three minutes into the game. The deficit grew to 9-1 and then 13-3 before the first half came to an end.
Though the Braves played better in the second half, out-scoring the Mountaineers 3-2, they couldn’t get back into the game and lost 15-6. Mt. St. Mary’s Ashley Rusk was the games leading scorer (5 goals, 2 assists) while Waldron and freshman Melissa Greenberg lead the Braves with two goals a piece.
It was just the third win of the year for Mt. St. Mary’s and the first in the NEC. Quinnipiac fell to 4-4, dropping its first NEC game. Unfortunately for the Braves, the worst of their road woes was yet to come.
Next came the Retrievers of UMBC, and after Waldron knotted the score at one, three minutes into the game, things went straight downhill for the Braves. The UMBC squad scored the next six goals and out-shot the Braves 58-18 en route to handing them their worst lost in two seasons.
The Retrievers shut out the Braves for the final 30 minutes of the match and scored 10 second-half goals to finish off the blowout 26-6. Again the lone bright spot for the Braves was Waldron. She added two more goals and two assists which moved her ahead of senior Colleen Dooley as the team’s leading scorer and brought her within two points shy of 100 for her career.
The good news for Quinnipiac is that it will return to the friendly confines of Brave field for a three game home stand, and won’t leave the state of Connecticut for the rest of the season; the bad news is that the schedule doesn’t get any easier with five games remaining.
The difficult schedule consists of Manhattan, Wagner, NEC leading Monmouth – on a five game winning streak, an extremely talented UCONN team, and conference rival Sacred Heart.