On Tuesday, April 17, the Men’s Lacrosse team went head to head with the Wabash College Little Giants on a bone chilling afternoon, winning 21-4. The game weathered rain, wind and sunshine in its hour and 55-minute duration.
“We are happy with our improvement over the past week and half,” head coach, Jay Owen, said.
The first quarter started off with a Wabash goal, 2:07 in, but it was their only one for the remaining 12:53. The Tigers used that goal to fuel their fire on the field. When the Little Giants failed to clear the field, there was a turnover, caused by Jack Maloney, ’20, that gave Noah Moderwell, ’20, the opportunity to pass to Matthew Welch, ’20, scoring the first goal for the Tigers.
That goal paved the way for the rest of the game, with Wabash only scoring three more times.
The next five goals for the Tigers were all scored unassisted, the first from Jerry Coyle, ’19, the second from Jack Strahm, ’19, the third from Lucas Klever, ’21 and the next two from Coyle and Klever again.
Going into the second quarter, the Tigers were ahead, 6-1. The Little Giants put up a fight to keep the score gap from increasing, but the Tigers were too much of a match for them. Off of another turnover caused by Klever, the Tigers cleared and came in to score again with an additional unassisted shot from Coyle. The next two goals were from Moderwell, who had a good game on Wednesday, putting the Tigers ahead 9-1 at the half.
“Our defense has gotten a lot more cohesive in our slides and recoveries,” Owen said. “We have also gotten our faceoff person back, Snodgrass. That has been huge for us. I think he went 20-27 against Wooster and 26-29 yesterday. We have been missing him most of the year, so having him back has meant we have had the ball more on offense and played less defense, which is a very good thing.”
Coming out into the second half, the Little Giants snuck one goal past the third goalie of the game, Max Cavellier, ’21. The Tigers went on to score five more goals. In the fourth quarter, the Tigers put in Cooper Swenson, ’19, who let two past him, but his teammates rallied behind him and put seven more shots between the goal posts at the other end of the field.
Overall, the Tigers took more than half of the amount of shots the Little Giants took with a total of 66 shots. Witt won 26 of the 29 faceoffs and had 19 turnovers, 10 less than Wabash. Grant Snodgrass, ‘21, lead the team in groundballs, with a total of seven and was the player that won all 26 faceoffs. Anthony LeBarge III, ’20, caused four turnovers and had a total of five groundballs. Coyle and Strahm each had two assists each, with their only being seven assists in the entirety if the game.
Owen said that he was “proud of everyone’s effort and focus yesterday. We have some good momentum headed into Saturday’s game against Aurora, who is a perennial NCAA tournament team. Looking to close the year out with a good win.”
On Saturday, the Tigers fought hard against the Aurora College Spartans, scoring four points to the Spartan’s five points, and only remaining one behind heading into the half. The second half is what did the Tigers in, with the Spartans scoring four points and Witt scoring one final goal. Aurora College came back and scored two more goals in the fourth quarter, putting them ahead of the Tigers and ending the game 13-7.
This game concluded the Men’s Lacrosse regular season.
