Marquette Mows Down Detroit Mercy

In the preview for Friday’s women’s lacrosse game, we talked about the need for Marquette women’s lacrosse to iron out their offense. The Golden Eagles are down two key cogs of their attack due to injury, and they lost to Louisville and Ohio State at least partially due to the offense not putting goals on the board.

Well, at least for 60 minutes, the problems with the offense have been solved.

On Friday afternoon in Michigan, the Golden Eagles scored six times in the first 11 minutes on their way to a seven goal first quarter and a 22-9 victory over Detroit Mercy. The Golden Eagles have snapped a three game losing streak, and they’re now 2-3 on the season.

The game started out like a game starts out, with the two teams trading a goal back and forth. Then Shea Garcia had enough of this nonsense. The senior from New York then took over the game, scoring on her first, second, third, and fourth shot of the game, and then helped on Kyra LaMotte’s goal with 65 seconds left in the first to put Marquette up 7-2.

The Marquette offense kept on chugging in the second quarter, booming the lead out to 11-3 before three minutes clicked away, and then Garcia scored on her fifth shot of the game. She assisted on Lydia Foust’s goal with 2:51 to go before halftime, which was MU’s 14th of the game. The Golden Eagles went to halftime up 15-7, and Garcia had five goals and two assists. Seven points is a solid day’s work, and it was only halfway through.

Garcia’s sixth shot of the game was saved. That’s fine, it was 17-9 MU at that point. Shot #7 was not saved, maybe partially because it was a free position shot, maybe partially because Garcia was on fire, and it was 18-9.

27 seconds later, LaMotte scored on the free position to make it 19-9, and thus the running clock was activated for the rest of the game. Detroit would not score again, and the Golden Eagles emptied the bench in the fourth quarter on their way to the win.

Garcia had hit a career best in goals with five in the first half alone. LaMotte finished with five goals in the game, her season high after putting up 60 for Furman a year ago. Ellie Henry had a career high 10 draw controls. Mary Schumar had five assists to boost her season average which was already 23rd best in all of Division 1. Hanna Bodner scored Marquette’s final goal of the game which doubled as her first collegiate goal.

Who didn’t I mention? Oh, Lydia Foust, who had four goals and an assist. Audrey Brett, who had a team high three ground balls and three caused turnovers.

Head coach Meredith Black split the goalkeeping straight down the middle, maybe on purpose coming in, maybe because MU was up 15-7 at the break. Amanda Rumsey made two saves in the first half while facing just 10 shots, five in each quarter. Brynna Nixon came on in the second half and only saw seven total shots and just three on goal, stopping one in the fourth quarter.

Up Next: The Golden Eagles will wrap up their six game stretch away from Valley Fields next weekend. They’ll be in upstate New York for a pair of contests. It’ll be Canisius on Friday afternoon, followed by Niagara on Sunday afternoon. The Griffins are 3-0 on the year with a Sunday home game against first year program Pittsburgh coming before MU makes their way to Buffalo. The Purple Eagles have started off the season 1-2 with three straight road games, and they will play at Youngstown State on Sunday before preparing for MU.