W. Lacrosse Races Past Quinnipiac

The Harvard women’s lacrosse team erupted for a 7-0 lead in the first 7:58 of its contest against Quinnipiac on Saturday before cruising to a 15-9 win in Hamden, Conn.

The Crimson (2-1) managed to rebound from Wednesday’s tough loss to Boston College by spoiling the Bobcats’ home opener with a well-balanced scoring attack.

Junior midfielder Casey Owens, who scored four times against the Eagles, put Harvard in good position with two early goals.

The Crimson also had tallies from sophomore midfielder Allison Kaveney, junior attackers Catherine Sproul and Bessie Clark and freshman attackers Liz Gamble and Perry Barlow, among others.

“One of our main goals for this game was to come out hard, take it to them, and just be intense from the very beginning,” Clark said. “We were just trying to focus on the first five minutes, playing as intensely as possible, and then going from there.”

After going up by a touchdown and looking to run away with the game, Harvard let Quinnipiac (0-4) sneak back into the contest.

The Bobcats—coming off a less-than-impressive performance against No. 3 Maryland in which they were trounced 25-3—scored five of the next seven goals to narrow the margin to 9-5.

“I think we started to let up just a little bit because we had gone ahead by so much,” Sproul said. “But I think we never really lost the momentum. I think we still stayed in control of the game. They just were able to come back with a little bit.”

“I don’t think that the tide ever really swung into their direction,” said junior midfielder Elaine Belitsos. “After their fifth goal, we were able to reevaluate and make sure that we didn’t allow ourselves to start playing down.”

The Crimson regrouped, taking a commanding 11-5 lead into halftime before coasting to a 15-9 victory.

“One of the things that was nice about this game was that our goals were definitely distributed across a bunch of the different attackers,” Clark said. “It was nice to see contributions from a wide range of people. It makes us more of a threat as a team.”

“We all mentally wanted to come out strong like we did last game,” Belitsos said, “but I think what we derived from the game was that we were able to maintain that lead and put the ball in the net when we did allow some more goals.

“We were able to use our momentum when we needed to maintain a lead in this game,” she added.

Harvard now has an entire week off before hosting Connecticut on Saturday. The team has a variety of objectives for the upcoming week of practices.

“We have the resources to flip the switch if we get in a tight game situation,” Belitsos said, “but I think we’re going to work on making sure that we can maintain a consistent lead, make sure we’re using all our [attackers]. It’s nice to have a week now to reformulate some things. I think we have a lot of momentum right now.”