The Pomona-Pitzer and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women’s lacrosse teams wrote another chapter of the Sixth Street rivalry in their game on Saturday, April 5, as the Hens scored early and often, building a lead that was too much for the
Athenas to overcome.
Both teams had been playing well coming into the matchup. P-P
(11-3, 4-2 SCIAC) had won seven of their last eight games entering Saturday, while
CMS (9-4, 2-4 SCIAC) was riding an eight-game win streak and sat just one
game back in SCIAC standings.
Game action escalated quickly as Hannah Christenson PO ’17
scored a minute and a half into the contest to put the Hens in the lead. With
25 minutes on the clock, a goal by Molly O’Donnell CM ’16 evened
things at one goal apiece. However, Sarah Markowitz PZ ’16 had other ideas about the game: After a CMS foul, she buried a free position shot, and scored again in under a
minute after P-P won the draw, pushing P-P’s lead to 3-1. One more set of
traded goals had the score at 4-2 with just under 20 minutes in the half.
Another free position shot by Markowitz gave the Sagehens a three-goal lead.
Markowitz would finish the half with an impressive four goals,
making all four of her shot attempts. Her final goal of the half, another free
position shot with 8:11 left, pushed the score to 7-3 P-P. Six substitutions as
well as a goalie change were made by CMS to try to get some fresh legs and
energy to spark a comeback, but the experiment fell short and the score held
7-3 at halftime. The stat sheet shed no light on the P-P keys to success for the
half, as both teams played fairly well but P-P simply converted more
opportunities.
P-P’s poised and clean game carried on into the second
half, when the Sagehens were able to build their lead. Within two minutes of starting second-half
play, Markowitz added another goal, bringing her total to five for the game—as
many goals as CMS could muster the entire game.
Christensen then added two more goals in the next five minutes, capping off a dominant 6-1 goal stretch by the Sagehens that brought the score from a close 5-3 in the
middle of the first period to 11-4 with 16 minutes remaining in the second half. The run, powered by Chistenson, Markowitz, and a stellar P-P defense, solidified the lead and secured the victory for the Sagehens.
The defense for P-P was stout, letting up only 15 attempted
shots. It helped to have Gaby Fukumura PO ’17 play a masterful 60 minutes in
goal, stopping eight out of 13 shots on goal, all while orchestrating the defense
to perfection. Aubrey Douglass PZ ’16 played point guard for the Sagehens,
dishing out three assists in the game.
The seven-goal deficit proved insurmountable for the Athenas, though they scored one more goal to make the final score 11-5 in favor of the Sagehens.
Both teams had four players score, but CMS only had
one player, Izzy Laterzo CM ’16, able to deliver more than one ball to
the back of the net. The dynamic duo of Christenson and Markowitz contributed nine
goals for P-P.
The victory moved P-P one game ahead of CMS in the SCIAC
standings, and the teams currently reside in third and fourth
place. Occidental College and the University of Redlands currently sit tied at 5-1 atop the SCIAC
standings. All SCIAC teams play each other once more, so the next couple weeks
are crucial for postseason hopes. CMS plays Redlands on Wednesday, April 9, and P-P’s next game is against last-place Whitter College on the same day.