Foresters Extinguish the Prairie Fire!

LFC rolls past fellow Midwest Conference School in Women's Lacrosse

Lake Forest College would rebound from an earlier defeat to DePaul as the dominated the Knox Prairie Fire at Farwell Field on Sunday.

The Lake Forest faithful were given a dominating display of offensive possession and execution. In addition to the offensive outburst, a spectacular individual defensive performance occur ed as well. As spectacular as it was, it was also an extremely rare occurrence as senior Sherie Dubinski recorded SEVEN interceptions in the game, and forced a total of 11 turnovers.

Ten different foresters would record goals in the 12-1 rout of the Knox team. The Foresters would receive two goals from both Amelia Lawrence and Emily Hampden-Smith. It was the second time that Hampden-Smith had recorded multiple goals against teams who compete in the Midwest Conference (Ripon).

"I was really impressed with our passing. One of the things that really stood out about the game for me was that the girls not only kept possession of the ball, but they kept the ball in the air almost the entire first half." commented Coach Catanzaro. "Knox was short players, so when they had an injury, we took a player off the field as well out of courtesy, and it really opened up the field for us quite a bit. We were able to take advantage of that and get some quick goals early."

Lawrence would score the Foresters first goal off of a great feed from Sarah Jonathan. Amanda Forsyth would score the Foresters second goal after picking up a ground ball and weaving to the goal for her third goal of the season. Lawrence would factor in on the next goal as well, but this time it was her outstanding pass to Sarah Milligan that gave Milligan her team leading 18th goal of the season (tied with Emily White). Lawrence would have another opportunity to score, but would drive a shot off the post. The ball was rebounded by Danielle Leonardo, who would pass it back to Lawrence in front of the net. Lawrence would make a fake left, before finishing softly past the goal tender on the right side of the net.

With it clear that the Foresters were in control of the game on multiple levels, Coach Catanzaro started to rotate the entire team every 8 minutes. His rotation paid off as Hampden-Smith would score her first goal off of a free-short to make it a 5-0 lead for the Foresters. Eileen Newcomer would score her second goal after putting back a rebound off of her own free shot to make it 6-0. The Prairie Fire would control the next draw and create a scoring opportunity with 3 minutes to go in the game. Generating their first shot of the half, they were able to slip one past the Forester goalie to make the score 6-1. Knox would control the next draw as well, but an interception by Dubinski would lead to a scoring opportunity for Hampden-Smith. Emily would score her second goal of the day from the left side of the 8m line to give the Foresters a 7-1 lead going into the half.

The second half would start much the way the first half did. The Foresters would score their first goal of the second half 13 seconds into the half as Danielle Leonardo would scoop up the draw and take it the length of the field for a goal. A minute and a half later Maeve Connelley would score a goal after another Dubinski interception to make the score 9-1. The Foresters would increase their lead to 10-1 on Sam Herron's first goal of her career. The usual defenseman was taking some minutes on the offensive end of the field in order to spell some of the midfielders.

Following Herron's goal, the Foresters would lose the draw, but Dubinski would record another interception that led to a fast break for the Foresters. Dubinski took the ball the length of the field, but was denied a goal by the goalie. On the clear, Dubinski dropped to the middle of the field and intercepted the Knox goalie. Dubinski would feed the ball to Stacy Dierking who would transition to the offensive end and score her first career goal.

Up 11-1, the Foresters would practice long possessions on the next two opportunities, before Rosy Fujimotowould provide the Foresters with their final goal of the day to secure the 12-1 victory. The goal was Fujimoto's first career goal.

The Foresters outshot Knox 40-2 on the day. Dubinski lead the defense with 7 interceptions and she scooped up 6 groundballs on the day.

"I was thrilled for Sherie. This is her first time playing lacrosse, and you can tell that she has a natural knack for the sport. The way she was roaming the field today, I thought about asking her to come back and play safety on the football team next year. I have never seen anticipation like that on the lacrosse field before." Catanzaro continued,"I was happy to that we had the chance to see a lot of player get playing time and get a chance to take shots on the goal. I was thrilled with the improvement that some of the girls have shown since the first day they showed up to today. I was impressed by a number of the first year players. Emily Hampden-Smith, Eileen Newcomer, Amanda Forsyth, Rosy Fujimoto, Stacy Dierking, among them. These are girls who scored goals for us today. Four weeks ago, when we went to Wheaton, these girls were seeing a lacrosse field for the first time and learning what an eight meter line was. I couldn't be happier with their progress."

The Foresters improved to 7-2 on the season and return to action next week at home on Saturday with a game against the St. Mary's (IN) Irish Belles, a team that is made up of students from St. Mary's and from Notre Dame.