First-year Skyhawks women’s lacrosse head coach JoJo Lutz has seen improvement in her squad, but she’s still looking for her first win as Fort Lewis College lost 18-5 at home against Regis on Thursday.
Lutz’s main goal for Year 2 was improvement, and the Skyhawks did improve their score from the first time they played Regis this season, an 18-1 defeat on March 22. FLC was competitive in the first and third quarters on Thursday, only being outscored 6-4. However, the second and fourth quarters showed that the Skyhawks have a lot of work to do to be competitive with quality teams, as FLC was outscored 12-1.
“We did really well that first and second quarter,” Lutz said. “I’m really proud of the team. We had things we wanted to work on, and we did those things during that game. That was really exciting to see.”
The Skyhawks dropped to 0-8 overall and 0-6 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference after the loss. Fifth-year attack Diamond Velasco led the Skyhawks with two goals, and junior attack Piper Price finished with one goal and two assists. Junior goalkeeper Olivia Tilbury finished with seven saves for the Skyhawks.
No. 18 Regis improved to 8-4 overall and 5-1 in the RMAC after the win. Aubrey Benton, Lexie Springman and Maggie Schipfer each scored five goals for the Rangers.
The Rangers dominated most statistics, finishing with a 25-14 shots on goal advantage, 16-17 on clears and a 15-10 advantage on draw control.
Regis’ domination wasn’t seen in the first quarter as the teams entered the second tied 1-1. FLC sophomore Jasmine Nguyen had the final goal of the quarter with nearly 10 minutes left.
“We did a high-pressure look and we switched up our circle, which was nice too,” Lutz said. “We did really well in the circle, But we went straight into high pressure. Our defense does really well at that. So we started in that, which created a lot of cost turnovers early on.”
FLC’s defense had more trouble to start the second quarter as the Rangers scored the first four goals of the quarter, taking a 5-1 lead with 7:28 left in the quarter. Regis led 7-2 at the half, and Lutz told her team at the break that she wanted them to work hard and leave the field proud of themselves and of the team.
The Skyhawks continued to fight in the third, getting outscored 5-3 to trail 12-5 at the end of the third quarter. The wheels fell off in the fourth, with FLC getting outscored 6-0. Fatigue was an issue as the Skyhawks have fever subs at midfield.
On Saturday at 1 p.m., the Skyhawks will honor their seven seniors/fifth-year players with senior day against the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. The teams met in Colorado Springs on March 20, with the Mountain Lions coming out on top with a 22-7 win.