Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Wraps Up 2020 With A Record Tying Victory

Megan Menzuber’s goal less than 90 seconds into the game waaaaay back on March 11th, 2020, set the tone for the whole day for Marquette women’s lacrosse. That goal would end up being the first of a MU single game record seven for Menzuber, and the Golden Eagles tied a program record for goals in a game as they defeated Detroit Mercy by the final margin of 23-12. The team had previously set the record at 23 goals in a game during a 23-15 victory over Niagara in 2018. The win moved Marquette to 6-4 on the season and gave them their second win of the year away from Valley Fields.

Marquette may have won big while tying a program record for goals in a game, but for a long time, the outcome was very much in doubt in Detroit. The two teams traded markers for the first four goals of the game, and yellow cards on Kate Viviano and Lydia Foust led to Detroit goals by Elise Harder and Kaitlyn Wandelt. The second one there led to the Titans pulling within two goals at 6-4 with 7:53 left to go in the first quarter.

That’s about where Marquette started to put the game out of reach. Emily Cooper scored less than 20 seconds after Wandelt’s woman-up goal to kick off a 5-1 Golden Eagles run to end the half. That burst included three goals in the final four minutes of the half as well as Menzuber wrapping up her hat trick with 3:34 to go. Menzuber scored the first goal of the second half to make it a 6-1 Marquette run and stake the Golden Eagles to a 12-5 lead.

Wandelt answered Menzuber less than a minute later, but MU’s leading scorer on the day cracked back nearly immediately. Just 25 seconds wound off the clock before Menzuber wiped away the effects of Wandelt’s third goal of the day, but Detroit’s top scorer took just 31 seconds to answer right back. It was a wild few minutes there, but with 26:20 to go, Marquette had a 13-7 lead.

Kamryn Corraro made it 13-8, and Taryn McManus responded to a Lydia Foust goal with one of her own to keep Detroit within shouting distance of the Golden Eagles. McManus’s marker with 23:07 to play had the Golden Eagles up just 14-9 and the result here was clearly still in dispute.

Goals less than 30 seconds apart from Shea Garcia and Menzuber got the lead up to seven. Yellow cards played a part in how things carried out over the next seven minutes. A Logan Dobratz penalty led to a Taryn McManus goal for the Titans, but a card against Tegan McManus let Caroline Peterson put one in for the Golden Eagles, and with Garcia’s goal in the middle of those two, MU was up 18-10 with 13:20 to play. It was MU’s first eight goal lead of the contest and finally they were starting to create real distance from Detroit.

The Titans weren’t going away, though, and goals from Harder and Corraro surrounding Menzuber’s seventh goal of the game made it a seven goal game with 9:44 to play. Weirder things have absolutely happened in lacrosse, so this wasn’t quite over. However, Corraro’s goal would be the final one of the day for Detroit Mercy. Madison Kane got the Golden Eagles back to an eight goal margin, and MU closed things out on a 4-0 run thanks to three straight goals from Peterson.

Just a bonkers game, quite honestly.

Menzuber’s sock trick was joined by hat tricks from Peterson, Garcia, and Foust, with the first two women netting four goals in the game each. Caroline Steller joined Menzuber in the team lead in assists with three each. While Menzuber now has the single game record in goals, she had to settle for tying Claire Costanza’s team record for points ina game with 10. Costanza set the record back in 2015 as MU beat Saint Mary’s 15-4. She did the exact opposite of Menzuber, tallying seven assists and three goals to get to 10 total points.

No highlights for this one, but here’s a postgame interview with Menzuber on her record breaking day.

Up Next: Nothing. This game was played on March 11th, and on March 12th, the Big East cancelled the 2020 spring sport championships due to coronavirus concerns. As such, there was no reason to be playing the regular season contests to lead to the Big East tournament, and Marquette dumped the remainder of all athletic competitions just to be clear about what was happening. This wasn’t a surprise, as Marquette had already announced that the university was moving to a distance learning model through the second week of April, and, quite honestly, it’s hard to have a team practice and prepare for a game when you can’t get 50 people in one spot on campus.

So, that’s it. MU finishes the shortened season with a record of 6-4. While we have to append an asterisk to it, it is the second winning season in program history, and the second in the past three seasons. It also guarantees that Marquette has not had a losing record in a season since 2017, as the Golden Eagles went 9-9 in 2019. We’ll be back at some point — because we clearly have the time to fill — to do a full wrap up on the season.