Falling behind early and never managing to recover, the Women's Lacrosse team lost to the Maryland Terrapins 13-8 in front of a home crowd on Saturday. Hopkins saw its four game win streak fall as the No. 13 Terrapins defeated the No. 17 Jays after racing to an 8-1 first half lead and holding on to the advantage from there.
The loss drops Hopkins to 7-5, taking the wind out of its sails after they had won seven of the last eight games, leaving their hopes of winning the final nine games on their schedule dashed.
Despite the loss, players realize they cannot look back on previous games with regret.
"Everyone always wants a loss back, but we're focusing on our upcoming games," said junior attacker Meghan Burnett.
Against Maryland, things did not start badly for Hopkins, and the Jays even managed to score the first goal of the game, as sophomore midfielder Heidi Pearce took senior attacker and co-captain Erin Wellner's pass and scored to put the Jays up 1-0. But Maryland recovered in a major way, scoring the next eight goals in a span of just under 24 minutes to take a commanding lead before the half.
The Terrapins relied on two of their strongest players as Meredith Egan and Sonia Judd accounted for five of the eight Maryland goals en route to the commanding 8-1 lead with just minutes remaining before halftime.
But the Blue Jays attempted to mount a small comeback right before the end of the half. Senior attacker Jamie Larrimore scored with 37 seconds remaining before the half, and Wellner followed that with a score of her own, a free position goal with four seconds remaining to drop the Maryland lead to 8-3 heading into the half.
The Blue Jays managed to start the second half with the same enthusiasm as they scored the first goal of the half behind the outstanding effort of Wellner, who passed the ball to junior attacker Liz Holland for an impressive goal to cut the Maryland lead to 8-4.
But the two teams began a stretch of trading goals that would last for most of a frustrating second half for the Blue Jays. Although the Jays were able to keep up with Maryland as each team scored five goals during the half, the deficit was too much to make up.
Following Holland's goal, Maryland countered with Courtney Hobbs' first goal of the day. But Hopkins fought back behind Burnett, who scored to cut the Maryland lead back to four.
Once again, however, Maryland responded as Egan scored her fourth goal of the contest.
Following Egan's goal, Hopkins attempted a rally, but it would prove too little too late to pose a serious threat to the Terrapin lead.
Senior midfielder Christy Peterson scored a mere 12 seconds after Egan, to cut the deficit again to four goals. Larrimore scored just under two minutes later to make the score 10-7 in favor of Maryland.But that was as close as the Blue Jays would come to defeating the Terps. Maryland scored the game's final three goals to make the final score 13-8.
Despite their disappointment, players attempted to put a positive spin on the loss, emphasizing the fact that they stayed competitive with a very powerful team.
"Of course we wanted to win the game, but we did much better than we have in previous years," said Burnett.
Players also seemed willing to look to the loss also as a motivating tactic to inspire a wining streak to last the rest of the season.
"We want to bounce right back after the loss, and we hope to get into the NCAA Tournament," said Burnett.
In a game that ended too late to be included in this edition, the Blue Jays hosted the Villanova Wildcats on Wednesday night. Entering the game with Hopkins, the Wildcats boasted a 7-5 record for the season, but have managed to win only one of their previous four games.
The Blue Jays will then travel to New York to battle the Hofstra Pride next Wednesday at 3 p.m. Hofstra has won the only two meetings between the two schools.
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