Sophomore goaltender Kate Clancy recorded a career-high 13 saves on Saturday, but it wasn’t enough to stop the stampede.
The Wildcat lacrosse team fell at home to the Fairfield University Stags by a final score of 16-6. The team is now 2-4 on the season. The Stags fired a total of 33 shots and forced an attack that was too strong for the Wildcats to overcome.
“We didn’t have a lot of positives out there. I think we really shot ourselves in the foot with a lot of things,” head coach Sarah Albrecht after the game. “I think we need to work harder off ball [and] on ball. I think we need to work harder with our fundamentals. It’s something that we really harped on.”
The two teams remained fairly even in the score column for a good portion of the first half. With 18:39 left in the half, the score was 3-2 in favor of Fairfield. Krissy Schafer and Devon Croke were responsible for the first two Wildcat goals.
But the Stags dominated the ‘Cats on the offensive side of the ball for the remainder of the half. Four different Fairfield players scored a total of seven goals in a 20-minute span. Devan Miller found the back of the net to give UNH its third goal of the half, but Fairfield’s 21 shots in the first half resulted in a 10-3 lead at halftime. Clancy was able to save nine shots in the first stanza due to the Stags’ poor shot selection at times.
“I mean I was seeing the ball a little better in the first half,” Clancy said. “My defense was forcing bad shots down the lane so that was good.”
The Stags continued to roll to start the second half. Maeve Quinn fired a shot past Clancy, her third goal of the game, to boost the Stag lead to eight only six minutes into the second frame.
UNH started a small rally when Laura McHoul and Miller both capitalized off free position shots to make it 11-5 Fairfield. But the rally was short lived and Stag midfielder Riley Hellstein took over the game.
Hellstein recorded four points in the second half, including three goals, to spark the Stags’ offense in the rout of the Wildcats.
UNH midfielder Carly Wooters scored a goal with 10 seconds left in regulation to continue her streak of six consecutive games with a score, but the final tally was 16-6 in Fairfield’s favor.
“Well, respect to them. They went hard, they really came out and fought,” Clancy said. Clancy believes the team is capable of playing at a higher level, a process that starts with working hard in practices.
“We all know that we can play at a certain level and I think it’s just really working at that level in practice everyday and holding each other accountable,” she said.
The Wildcats begin a three-game road trip starting on Saturday. The team starts with a 1 p.m. game against the Harvard Crimson.
