The Marquette Women’s Lacrosse All-Time Draw Controls Chart

By now, you should be more than familiar with our series of regularly updating leaderboards for various Marquette Golden Eagles sports accomplishments. Keep checking back to that link in the previous sentence for our charts as the seasons continue to churn through history and MU’s various teams continue to create new memories and accomplishments.

We’re going to look at the women’s lacrosse record book for draw controls in this one.

Somehow, Grace Gabriel’s record of 332 career draw controls looks bigger and bigger every year. One of those “no one’s coming near it” things, where if no one is chasing after it closely, then it’s hard to believe that anyone is going to come close any time soon. Emily Cooper wrapped up her Marquette career in 2021 with 187 controls, more than anyone else in program history except for Gabriel, and Cooper was still 145 away. She needed 78% more draw controls to pass Gabriel! Three-quarters of her entire career extra on top of it!

That’s wild.

Our primary focus for 2023 is Ellie Henry, who is back for a fifth season of eligibility this spring. She starts the year off with 157 DCs after collecting a team high 88 last season. If she just repeats that again this year, Henry will become Marquette’s second ever player with 200 career draw controls. It might take her awhile, especially if she’s going to be sharing controls as much as she did last year. Mary Blee had 74 and Emma Soccodato had 64, and both of those women return for 2023 as well. That gives Marquette a lot of experience at scooping up draws and getting into their offense, but it might end up being limiting for Henry’s chances at 200. She only needs 43, so that seems doable unless the coaching staff changes up their tactics.

Blee’s 74 as a junior gives her 87 for her career, and that’s already eighth best in Marquette history. This is one of those “Grace Gabriel grabbed so many draws across four years and so MU didn’t have anyone else getting to 100 along the way” things. Y’know, common events like that. Anyway, if Blee is back at it with that kind of productivity, she’ll easily become the seventh Golden Eagle to ever record 100 draw controls, and she could slip right into the top five all time. Soccodato moved into the top 10 with just two career draw controls before her 64 a year ago, and if she does that again this year, she’ll be in the 100 Club as well by season’s end.

We’ll also keep an eye on Josie Kropp, who came in fourth on the team a year ago in draw controls with 43. The 5’4” Minnesotan had two as a freshman so she sits at 45 overall and just 21 behind Soccodato. Marquette had 312 controls as a team last year while going 8-10 overall. If you argue that they need more to turn that into 10-8 this season, then there’s more controls available to stack up, and maybe that gives Kropp a shot at 60 and getting into triple digits as well.

Here’s the full chart as it stands at the end of the historic 2023 season.