Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Perfect WCU reaches PSAC final
Golden Rams beat ESU, 17-11, will host Seton Hill Sunday
WEST GOSHEN >> It featured a championship-like atmosphere, and the level of play was certainly at that elite level. But West Chester’s definitive 17-11 victory Wednesday at Vonnie Gros Field against archrival East Stroudsburg wasn’t for the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference crown.
It was a semifinal triumph for the right to advance to the final. But afterwards it was clear that the Golden Rams understood the lofty stakes.
“(East Stroudsburg) is just one of those teams – we know they are going to come out hard. So it felt good to win today,” said junior midfielder Lindsay Monigle.
“We stuck with the game plan and came up big when we had to,” added WCU head coach Ginny
Martino. “We played a tough team tough, and that’s what it is going to take. There are no pushovers from here on out.”
Now 12-0 this season, the Rams will host Seton Hill in the PSAC Title Game on Sunday at 1 p.m. It will be West Chester’s 30th finals appearance since 1979, and the Rams are 23-6 heading in.
“We are excited to play a new opponent,” Monigle said. “We haven’t seen the other side of the PSAC.”
Ranked fourth nationally, WCU is shooting for its third conference title in succession since 2018 (no title was awarded in 2020 when the season was cancelled due to COVID-19). The Rams have now won 15 in a row overall dating back to the end of the 2019 campaign. The last setback came in the NCAA Division II Title Game against Adelphi (N.Y.) nearly two calendar years ago.
“That still eats us up. We remember for sure, and that’s driving us,” Martino said.
“It feels like a long time ago, but I remember every second of that game,” added attacker Tatum Altman, who is a graduate student. “Every time I step onto the field I think about that one.”
On Wednesday, West Chester employed a mid-match 10-2 surge that proved to be the difference. It was WCU’s third victory this season against the Warriors, which accounts for all of their losses in 13 outings.
“Both of these teams have played some lopsided games this season, and you can get used to that,” Martino pointed out. “But then all of the sudden it’s this one, which is like to the death.”
In the early going, there were five ties and three lead changes. East Stroudsburg actually led it 3-2 when the Rams went on the terrific extended rally that featured some explosive offense, a lot of stingy defense and excellent transition work. When it ended 32 minutes later, WCU was comfortable ahead 11-5 in the second half.
“We definitely pulled away there,” Martino said. “It starts when the defense makes a great stand and then through our transition and then we took care of business at the other end. It was huge.”
Monigle had a hand in five of the tallies, with two goals and three assists. Senior Trisha Baud chipped in with two goals in that stretch as well. The Rams ended the run with five goals in a row.
“Once we found our mojo, it was go-time,” Monigle said. “It was such an intense game, I didn’t even realize we did that.”
Eventually the lead expanded to seven, but ESU made a couple final pushes. They scored two in a row in less than a minute midway through the second half, but West Chester responded with a pair of goals by Baud from Monigle. The Warriors did it again with two quick goals soon thereafter – this time in just 11 seconds – but a big defensive takeaway by WCU’s Julia Rossi led to a free position goal by Altman to halt the momentum.
“I don’t want to say we like being down, or under pressure, but our defense seems to get locked-in even more in those situations,” said Monigle, who finished with two goals and seven assists.
A case in point: with less than five minutes on the clock and two-down, the Rams somehow got possession, milked several minutes off the clock, and then capped it off with a Tatum goal with 1:43 to go.
“We just had to keep our composure,” Altman said. “We knew they were coming at us with two or three girls, but we didn’t turn it over. We did what we needed to do.”
Those sequences in the late going were the kind of moments you often see from championship teams.
“You want to see how they respond to adversity,” Martino acknowledged. “Lacrosse is all about scoring goals, and you are going to be scored on. Goalies and defenses need to understand that. Some teams would crumble, getting two quick goals scored on them, but we are resilient. And that is going to take us far.”
Baud and Altman finished with six and five goals, respectively, and Tara Morrissey chipped in with two goals for WCU.
“West Chester is very good. They are poised as a team,” said East Stroudsburg head coach Xeni Barakos-Yoder.
“To be honest, we didn’t play so hot in the defensive end today, which is normally a strong point for us. We needed to play our best game to beat (WCU), and we didn’t do that.”