Claremont, CA – On Saturday, April 6th, Occidental's lacrosse team traveled to Claremont, California to play against the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens. This game marks the beginning of the Tigers' second round of conference play. The match finished 23-5 Sagehens.
Going into a game against a nationally ranked team (twelfth in the country), the Tigers challenged themselves to come with a "ready to play" mindset. As soon as the game began the Tigers roared, winning the first draw control and scoring the first goal of the game. The draw, earned by first-year defender Evie Kim, led to a free position opportunity for senior attacker, Ariel Shweiki, who saw her chance and capitalized on it. Just like that, the Tigers led the game, scoring just 30 seconds into gameplay. Even when the Sagehens answered back with four consecutive goals, Occidental retaliated, outscoring Pomona-Pitzer 4-2 in the last six minutes and 30 seconds of the first quarter. The Tigers went on a last-minute rampage, scoring the final two goals of the first quarter. Remarkably, sophomore midfielder, Maeve Moylan, sank one in the back of the net with only one second left in the quarter.
The first quarter ended 6-5 Sagehens (the closest it's been since the teams started playing quarters in the Spring of 2022). Looking back even further and comparing quarters to halves, the first period has not been this close since the teams went into halftime tied 5-5 in 2017. Referencing a quote said by the women's lacrosse team at Northwestern University, one of the Sagehen's junior defenders, Caroline Welch, admitted, "adversity was hitting" in the first quarter for Pomona-Pitzer as it appears that they did not expect Occidental to come out so strong. Overall, the Tigers had five different goal scorers in the first quarter. In order of succession, the goals were scored by Shweiki, senior midfielder and captain Isabella Kwan (assisted by sophomore midfielder Elise Mahoney), sophomore attacker Olivia Okamoto, senior attacker and captain Halle Knutson (assisted by Moylan), and Moylan herself.
Of the Tigers' seven draw controls, Kim had six and Moylan had one. Both Pomona-Pitzer's team and Occidental's team were relatively even in ground balls, turnovers, and clears. While the Sagehens had 28 ground ball pick-ups, the Tigers had 25. Leading the charge was junior goalie Angie Angelacci (6), Moylan (5), and sophomore defender Sydney Acol (4). Similarly, Acol led the team in caused turnovers (3), followed by Kim, Kwan, and Angelacci with two each. Both Occidental and Pomona-Pitzer completed 14/15 clears. For the Tigers, the clears ranged from group efforts to switch fields in transition to using speed to carry the ball into the attacking end.
Given that this game signifies that the season is over half way completed, overall conference leaders are starting to be identified. Within the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC), Okamoto is ranked third in goals per game and ninth in points per game. Moylan also received recognition in multiple categories ranking second in overall draw controls, sixth in ground balls per game, and eighth in assists per game. Knutson joins Moylan in the ranks for assists per game coming in at seventh place. Finally, on the defensive end, Acol is seventh in caused turnovers per game and Angelacci is ninth in overall goalie save percentages.
