The Terrapins women’s lacrosse team didn’t have to worry about who was manning the goal crease last season. Graduate transfer goalkeeper Alex Fitzpatrick started all 22 contests and boasted the fifth-best goals against average in the country.
Now without Fitzpatrick, three Terps goalies have the opportunity to win the starting job. To this point, though, coach Cathy Reese has not been impressed.
Goalkeeper Emily Kift started between the pipes in the season-opening victory against William & Mary, tallying a save while allowing four goals. Goalie Megan Taylor played the second period, recording a pair of saves to complement three goals allowed.
After the victory over the Tribe, Reese said she wants to ensure her team is not allowing easy goals. When the Terps host Georgetown on Saturday afternoon, Taylor will start in goal, but Reese hasn’t committed to the freshman as the starter. Rather, she’s going to continue to follow a rotation.
“I want to see more out of our goalie play,” Reese said. “William & Mary scored a couple of goals off garbage goals. They picked up loose balls and scored. We just want to eliminate all of those things.”
When the Terps and Hoyas played in Washington last April, Fitzpatrick allowed three goals while recording six saves. If the Terps want success, attacker Caroline Wannen said, they need to put their goalies in better situations.
Wannen added that the Terps need to win more draw controls this weekend, The team won 14 against the Tribe, who were able to win 13 total while matching the Terps’ five in the second period.
“We’re looking to increase hustle a lot,” said Wannen, who scored a goal and started in the season opener. “We need to win draw controls more cleanly. [Against the Tribe], there were a lot of ground ball scrums in the midfield.”
While the Terps are hoping to control the draw circle, they also want to have more success picking up ground balls, Reese said. The club scooped up 16 to top William & Mary’s nine Sunday.
But the Terps had success in both areas against the Hoyas last year, winning the draw control battle 13-4 and picking up 24 ground balls while only allowing Georgetown to collect 10.
“The goal is to get every loose ball and every draw control, and we did not do a good enough job with that against William & Mary,” midfielder Zoe Stukenberg said. “We just need to fix that now before anything too drastic happens.”
The Terps are excited to play a local team because players on both sidelines are familiar with each other, Stukenberg said. But she fell short of calling the contest against the Hoyas a rivalry.
“Every team is kind of like a rivalry in some way,” Stukenberg said. “It’s really exciting to play them for sure. It’s the beginning of the season, so we have to build off the game before.”
Reese said she wants her team to do a better job controlling the tempo of the game this weekend. And she will be watching the goalie play carefully.
“I want to have less second chance opportunities we’re giving teams,” Reese said. “Attack the cage hard and come up with loose balls when we have the opportunity to.”
