With a win over No. 7 Maryland behind them and three top-10 opponents looming in the next two weeks, staying focused this weekend may be the biggest challenge for the women’s lacrosse team.
Duke plays No. 17 William & Mary (0-1) Friday at 3 p.m. and Richmond (0-1) at Koskinen Stadium Sunday at 1 p.m. The fourth-ranked Blue Devils beat Maryland 10-7 in College Park Saturday and face North Carolina, Princeton and Georgetown in the coming weeks.
Head coach Kerstin Kimel said her team cannot look past this weekend’s opponents.
“Both of these teams are really tough and really scrappy,” Kimel said. “They always come in to play us with a chip on their shoulder, because we’re a big game—we’re Duke, and that’s what every sport here has to face.”
William & Mary features several speedy goal-scorers capable of putting points on the board. Senior All-American candidate Morgan Watkins, who totalled 38 goals and 20 assists last year, leads the Tribe. Junior Colleen Dalon adds another threat and is a dynamic attacker who racked up 34 goals a year ago. Kimel said in order to stop Watkins, who scored four goals in William & Mary’s opener, the Blue Devils will have to mark her across the whole field.
“We want to limit her touches and try to slow her down in the midfield,” Kimel said. “She’s a great player, and we will just have to use our whole defensive unit to slow her down.”
William & Mary shot better than 50 percent as a team in its season opener. Led by junior goalie Megan Huether, the Blue Devils have allowed opponents to shoot only 29 percent this year and will try to continue this shut-down defense against the Tribe.
“One of our big focuses this year is on team defense and knowing that no one person is going to have to make the big stop because everybody out there is going to be right behind them to back them up,” Huether said. “That just allows us to take risks and try to create things on the defensive end because you know that if something happens you’ve got six other people there behind you.”
Duke will need a a similar collective effort on the offensive side this weekend. Last season, Duke defeated Richmond, 12-7, largely because of now-graduated senior Meghan Walters’ school-record six goals.
“This year’s team is more capable of putting out a team effort, and we as upperclassmen know that,” junior Katie Chrest said of a team that has eight players who have scored at least three goals. “I think that it’s just engaging everyone and letting the younger guys know that they are capable, and we need every single one of them.”
Along with Chrest, who has scored 10 goals, a number of freshmen are taking on larger roles than members of the incoming class have during prior seasons. Freshmen have totaled 12 goals, led by midfielder Rachel Sanford’s five tallies.
Because of this offensive firepower, neither William & Mary nor Richmond may have the skills to keep up with the Blue Devils, but Duke is still focused on this weekend’s matchups.
“They always bring a ton of intensity and a ton of emotion, and it tends to get teams out of their rhythm,” Chrest said of this weekend’s opponents. “We just need to not worry about what they’re doing and focus on our game.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.