With Gettysburg on horizon, women’s lacrosse takes care of business

Some things never change.

The F&M women’s lacrosse team kept on marching, dispatching their two opponents this week with relative ease.

The wins against Muhlenberg on Wednesday and Washington on Saturday pushed the Dips’ record to 11-1 overall and 7-0 in the Centennial Conference. Ranked fourth in the nation, F&M also sits atop the conference standings in a tie with the Gettysburg Bullets, who again are the primary competition for F&M in the Centennial.

Against the Mules on Wednesday, F&M relied on an outburst of offense in the second half, outscoring Muhlenberg 11-2 en route to a fairly easy 17-4 win.

Erin Dunne ’12 paced the Dips with a career-high six goals on the afternoon. Dunne opened the scoring shortly after the opening whistle at the 28-minute mark, giving the Dips the early 1-0 lead. She netted one more goal in the first period and then followed up her solid opening half with a dominant second, scoring four goals, including three of the final four goals of the game to put the Mules on ice.

Dunne also chipped in two assists on goals by Meredith Lussier ’11 and Laura Ruppersberger ’11 in the first period.

On Saturday, the Dips squared off against the Shorewomen from Washington and, once again, dispatched with their opponent with relative ease.

Rather than relying on one dominating half to overcome their opponent, F&M instead put together two equally impressive halves, outscoring Washington 9-3 in the first and then 10-2 in the second, leading to a convincing 19-5 victory.

For the second game in a row, the Dips offensively turned to one player for a majority of the offensive production.

This time around it was Lussier who stepped up to the challenge, finding the back of the net seven times over the course of the game.

The Dips got out to a hot start to open play, as Lussier and Sarah Veneski ’10 teamed up to give F&M a 2-0 advantage only a minute into the game. With another goal by Blake Hargest ’10 a few minutes later, Washington was in a 3-0 hole that they never recovered from.

To open the second half, the Shorewomen were looking to claw back into the game and it seemed they may be able to when they scored the opening goal of the half.

Any threat to the Diplomat lead was extinguished, however, as back-to-back goals by Hargest and Lussier pushed F&M’s lead to 11-4 and set off F&M’s third consecutive dominating half, dating back to the second period of the Muhlenberg game.

F&M closed out the game with eight unanswered goals, three of which came from Lussier.

The two dominating performances, which were also F&M’s final two home games of the season, gave the Dips a nice tune-up going into next week, when F&M will face off against Gettysburg in a game that will likely go a long way in determining Centennial Conference supremacy.

Both teams are 7-0 in the conference and both teams sport impressive overall records as well, with F&M standing at 11-1 and the Bullets holding a 13-2 record on the season.

All three losses by both teams have come to top-10 teams, as the Dips lost their only game of the season to second-ranked Salisbury and Gettysburg, currently ranked sixth in the country, dropped decisions to #11 Middlebury and the best team in the country, The College of New Jersey.

It will be a difficult week for the Dips, as immediately following the pivotal game against Gettysburg Wednesday, F&M will head to New Jersey to play TCNJ Friday.

These two games will go a long way toward determining exactly where F&M sits in comparison to the other top teams around the country as they prepare to make a run at their second consecutive national title and third in four years.

Following their two games against Gettysburg and TCNJ on the road, F&M will conclude its regular season on the road on Saturday against Haverford, which currently stands at a solid 11-3 on the season, good for fourth in the conference.