After a disappointing 2023 season, Temple Lacrosse needed to make a statement in its opening game. The Owls entered last season ranked, but failed to even finish above .500
The Owls started slowly against Colgate Saturday morning but opened the floodgates in the second half, outsourcing the Raiders 6-2 in the third and fourth quarters.
Temple (1-0, 0-0 American Athletic Conference) took down Colgate (0-1, 0-0 Patriot League) 11-5 at Howarth Field to start its 2024 campaign with a victory.
Both teams displayed strong defense, and neither offense looked comfortable to open the game. The Raiders had 17 ground balls in the contest and goalkeeper Lauren Solis had 17 saves on 38 shots. The Owls had 19 ground balls and goalkeeper Taylor Grollman had six saves on Colgate’s 11 shots.
“We’re still working on our shooting,” said Temple head coach Bonnie Rosen. “We got a lot of shots off, but I think we can do a little bit better job with what shots we’re looking for so that we can put them in the goal instead of just on the goal.”
Neither team even attempted a shot until five minutes into the game. Raiders midfielder Devon Maillet finally pushed past Temple’s defense and scored the first goal of the season with less than seven minutes remaining in the first period.
The Owls evened the score just two minutes later with a goal from midfielder Mia Ciancio. Temple took its first lead of the game a minute later with a free position goal by midfielder Belle Mastropietro.
Midfielder Maeve Tobin scored a goal assisted by attacker Mackenzie Roth two minutes into the second quarter to give the Owls a 3-1 lead. Colgate responded with 11 minutes left in the quarter, getting a ball past Grollman to cut the deficit to one.
Temple answered right back a minute later when Roth found attacker Julie Schickling for the score.
Midfielder Erin King scored the last goal of the first half with just a minute remaining to send the Owls into the locker room up 5-3.
“We played a full 60 minutes,” Mastropietro said. “Sometimes we might start slow or finish slow type of things, so that was a good 60 minutes. The things we worked on in practice all week really helped us and we’re just excited to keep building on what we did this week.”
Temple opened up the second half aggressively, keeping momentum on their side. They found the back of the net four times in the third quarter, turning a two-goal lead into a five-point blowout in the blink of an eye. The Raiders were unable to respond, scoring only once in the third quarter.
“We really picked each other up when people were getting frustrated in that first half when it was a close game,” Tobin said. “In the second half when things were going our way we really cheered for each other. We made sure that people knew they were doing great.”
The Owls took full command in the second half. They scored six goals to the Raiders’ two. Four of Temple’s 11 goals were free-position shots, while Colgate was only given one free-position attempt and it was unsuccessful.
“It was just learning to adjust to what the game was in front of us and it’s been one of our focuses to stay present and not worry about what’s coming next and what just happened and just kind of see the game that’s on the field,” Rosen said. “I was really proud of the way they stayed in the moment constantly. Everything about today was a really good first game.”
Temple starts its season with seven straight home games and is back in action at Howarth Field to take on Binghamton University (0-0, 0-0 American East Conference) on Feb. 14 at 3 p.m.
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