Saturday, April 26, 2008

Stormy Results for Lacrosse Team

In a game JMU needed to qualify for its conference tournament, last second heroics in the first half didn't provide enough momentum for the Dukes to beat George Mason for the fourth Colonial Athletic Association spot.

With three seconds left in the first half, sophomore midfielder Kim Griffin passed from behind the goal to senior attacker Emily Haller, who stuck it in for an 8-7 JMU lead. Haller's score came after three failed JMU attempts in the final minute, in a display JMU lacrosse coach Shelley Klaes-Bawcombe pointed to as a sign of progress.

But after a lightning storm delayed the game for about an hour and a half with the score tied at eight, JMU never captured the lead against George Mason, which qualified for the CAA tournament with an 11-10 victory.

"In the beginning of the year, we struggled to get one shot," Klaes-Bawcombe said with 22:56 left in the second half, before walking to the Festival Ballroom where both teams waited out the storm. "The fact that we were able to get four shots in the last minute and 30 seconds shows our progress."

But GMU scored three straight goals after play resumed, and the Patriots improved to 12-4 overall, 5-2 in the CAA with the win. JMU (8-9, 3-4) fell to sixth place in the CAA with the loss, when it needed to finish in the top four to qualify for the conference tournament.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The reason the game was so stormy is because the team played Edward 40 hands with 40oz HURRICANE malt beverages the night before..true story. Not a good decision for their game the next day, but at least it didn't hurt their wallets too bad.