So maybe the women’s lacrosse team didn’t “win” any games in the technical sense of the word, but we at Guilford aren’t so shallow as to measure success with points alone.Look at freshman goalie Lindsey Kennedy. In six of her 13 games she blocked at least 20 shots. Kennedy broke the school’s saves-per-game record, stopping 30 shots in the March 2 match against Roanoke.
The rookie goalie demolished another school record, ending the season with a total of 231 saves. The old record, set by Lauren Gill (’98) set in 1997-98, was 204.
And what about sophomore Kathryn Ragin? Ragin scored seven of Guilford’s nine goals against Bridgewater last Wednesday. Not only is that a career high for Ragin, it’s the most points any one player has scored in a game since Guilford beat Sweet Briar in 1998.
“We worked hard with what we had,” said sophomore Lauren Goodwin. “It was frustrating. Sometimes we’d be right there – the scores would be so close – we’d just get tired. I think we could have won more games if we’d had substitutes to come in every now and then.”
“Referees would come up to us after games to tell us we’d made the other teams work for their points,” said junior Sarah Walters-Bugbee. “That made it rewarding.”
The referees weren’t the only ones to offer encouraging words to the team. “After some games, the other team’s coach would come tell us, ‘You guys had us worried.’ The [opposing] teams had to work. It wasn’t as easy as they thought it would be,” said Goodwin.
And guess who just won the Good Sportsmanship Award in their ODAC Conference? No, seriously, they really did.
So maybe they ended the season 0-13 officially. Still, we should not discount the smaller, less chartable victories. And, there is always next year.