Girls’ Lax Falls Short to Loomis
Big Red girls’ lacrosse suffered a tough loss Saturday against Loomis Chaffee on the home turf. They narrowly missed victory, losing by just one goal, the final score being 11-10 Loomis. The loss on Saturday was especially disappointing considering the team had a three-game undefeated streak going for them.
The defeat leaves the girls with a 4-4-1 overall season record. The record does not illustrate fully, however, the closeness of the girls’ lost games. All of the team’s losses so far have been by only a single goal. The girls have given it their all, point for point, every game, and that’s all they can ask for. While they may have lost, the team brought that same passionate and hardworking attitude to the game against Loomis.
“We need to make a mental shift because all of our losses this season have been by one goal. We’re a really good team, and we could be winning all our games, so we need to improve our mental toughness to finish each game.”
The score is only numbers. More important is the details of the game and how they played the game. Overall, the girls played well together, with the defense supporting the offense, and the offense capitalizing on crucial goal opportunities as to alleviate some pressure from the defense.
“We need to make a mental shift because all of our losses this season have been by one goal. We’re a really good team, and we could be winning all our games, so we need to improve our mental toughness to finish each game.”
Post-graduate Walker Foehl, an attacker, praised the defense’s attentive playing. “Our defense did a really nice job switching the field during the transition,” she said.
The team also utilized many new and improved tactics learned in practice in the live game against Loomis. In the past several weeks of practice, the girls had been training diligently on their shooting. Upper Noa Siegel was impressed by the sheer number of scorers, describing that there was no single “superstar scoring all of [their] goals” but rather, there was a diversity of scorers contributing to the game.
Foehl explained that one shooting tactic among all others stood out in efficiency and really helped the team get on the scoreboard. “Most of our goals were scored on our run-and-gun offense which works well,” Foehl said.
Senior and co-captain Clara Hobbie agreed with Foehl. “Our game started out really strong with good fast breaks to score quick goals. The first half of the game was good.”
The game took a turn for the worse in the second half, however. With Loomis putting up a tough and close fight, the team felt the possibility of losing looming over their heads, forgetting about the equal chance of winning. Hobbie described that the girls may have “gotten too much in [their] own heads.”
The girls became too fixated on the fear of losing and ruining their unbeaten streak and lost sight of the game at hand. They began to second-guess their shots and back off tight plays, losing the aggressive edge with which they began. Their nervousness led to sloppy mistakes. This shows that sometimes games are not always about physical ability, but also mental capacity and strength.
Many on the team were disappointed by the loss, feeling strongly that the game could have easily been theirs if not for their loss of confidence in the second half. To prevent such a mistake from occurring again, Foehl said that the team needs to work on reducing unforced error.
Siegel saw a different take from the Loomis game. She believes that the team has to ramp up its focus and drive and make sure it brings the same vigor to the entire game as it does to the beginning of the game. If the girls want to win, they have to keep up the intensity throughout the entire game, whether they’re trailing or winning. This challenge will be a mental one, rather than a physical one that the girls can work on in practice.
“We need to make a mental shift because all of our losses this season have been by one goal. We’re a really good team, and we could be winning all our games, so we need to improve our mental toughness to finish each game,” Siegel said.
The girls will battle Brooks School on Saturday. They’ll look to maintain intensity and bring home a Big Red victory.