Braedan Shea
@Braedan_Shea
Jenn Thomas is back on Alden Street.
With mere seconds remaining in the Springfield College women’s lacrosse home-opener on Stagg Field against Framingham State University, Thomas couldn’t do anything else but flash a wide smile.
The scoreboard, reading 21-14 in favor of the Pride, not only meant that Springfield had won its first game of the season, but that Thomas had achieved the first big accomplishment of her coaching career at Springfield: her first victory at the helm of the Pride.
Although acknowledging the win was a big moment for her, Thomas humbly found that she is more proud of how the team performed overall.
“It feels great,” Thomas said. “But I think the best part is that it came from everyone on both sides of the field. I think our defense played great in the first half. We made a big adjustment – which I don’t think we were planning on – but they were able to adapt and be successful at it. Offensively, I think it was huge seeing new players step-off.”
From the opening draw, the game felt evenly matched. Every time one team would score, the other had an immediate answer.
Until graduate attack Jade O’Connor had seen enough.
With nine minutes left in the opening quarter, Karen Joy found a streaking O’Connor, who, in one clean move, caught the pass and rifled a shot toward the net. As the ball gracefully embraced the back of the goal, O’Connor emphatically spiked her stick in celebration. Seven minutes of gametime later, and after three more O’Connor stick spikes, Springfield exploded to a 5-2 lead, and would never trail from then on.
O’Connor finished the game with six total goals, a new collegiate career-high for her. Last season, in her first year at Springfield, O’Connor amassed five goals in two separate contests. During her time playing D-I lacrosse at Longwood University, her best was four goals.
O’Connor has already passed the double-digit goals mark on the season through two games – finding that her influx in scoring comes from an active offense.
“I think a lot of people work off of each other,” O’Connor said. “It’s really nice to have people low to feed up top, and even when the tension goes on me, it’s easy to find other people and find the backdoors in that defense.”
That ability to move the ball quickly allowed for nine separate Springfield players to score, headlined by O’Connor’s aforementioned six, Samantha Andresen’s five and first-year midfielder Lily Johnson not only scoring her first collegiate goal, but getting a hat-trick in the process. Arielle Johnson led the team with four assists.
Though having a slim lead for the majority of the game, an eight goal unanswered streak, including five heading into the halftime break, helped to push Springfield to an insurmountable margin.
“(The streak) was huge,” Thomas said. “It builds and sets us up for success on the run. Having that energy and like propelling us forward is really big. That’s important, but I think the big thing, as we always say, is ‘rule the draw, rule the world’. We focus on that a lot, and I thought we did very well on the draw circle, whether it’s players that were taking the draw or those on the circle did really well.”
Compared to last season, the impact that the underclassmen bring can really help push the Pride to a new level.
“There’s a lot of young talent that is finding their way in every game,” O’Connor said. “Every game is going to be another step up versus last year, where we had a lot of people who had been on the team for multiple years. It’s going to be a lot of figuring out each other’s strengths and working off each other, But It’s been really fun learning every single game.”
Thomas took over the head coach position for Kristen Mullady, who held the position for 13 years. Thomas was a former player for Mullady and was one of the key contributors on Mullady’s first NEWMAC Championship team in 2012. Now, not only are both former players who have coached the Pride, they share being head coaches who won their home debut on Stagg Field.
“Yeah, it feels great,” Thomas said. “(Mullady) is someone I look up to not just as a coach, but as a person. If I can follow in her footsteps, we’re on a good path.”
Photo Courtesy of Springfield College Athletics