Ahearn’s success on draws propels Terps
COLLEGE PARK — The task might have seemed intimidating.
Not only was Shaylan Ahearn, the Maryland women’s lacrosse team’s top draw specialist, asked to tangle with Duke’s Maddie Jenner, the nation’s leader in draw controls who set an NCAA Division I single-season record in that category this spring, but the 5-foot-7 Ahearn also gave up seven inches to Jenner.
Ahearn, however, refused to get drawn into the trap of viewing her matchup with Jenner as anything bordering on a personal level.
“I get that excited for everyone I do the draw against because I honestly see it as another opportunity to step on the field and get a little bit better,” said the Woodbine resident and Glenelg Country School graduate. “I think the tournament, I’ve been feeling really good with the draw, but it’s because our whole team is on the same page, not because I’m necessarily doing anything different.”
That fervor served Ahearn well. The junior corralled nine draws herself — the Terps won 18 of 28 overall — and added a pair of goals in a 19-6 romp over the visiting Blue Devils in an NCAA Tournament secondround game before an announced 1,111 at the Field Hockey & Lacrosse Complex. They will welcome No. 7 seed Florida to College Park for a quarterfinal game on Thursday at a time to be announced.
The Gators (17-4) disposed of Jacksonville,
15-10, in an earlier second-round game.
How thorough was Maryland (18-1), the No. 2 seed that has now won 10 games in a row? The offense chased Duke starting goalkeeper Sophia LeRose — who had made a career-high 17 saves in Friday’s 17-12 win against Johns Hopkins in the first round — from the game with 2:46 left in the second quarter and then permanently at the start of the fourth.
The defense shut out the Blue Devils for a nearly 23-minute stretch spanning the second and third quarters. And the Terps played the final 30:05 under a running clock that was implemented when they reached a 15-5 advantage with five seconds left in the second period and maintained that 10-goal gap for the remainder of the game.
A significant portion of Maryland’s success could be linked to the play of Ahearn and her teammates on the draw circle, graduate student defender Abby Bosco and sophomore midfielder Shannon Smith. Smith, a Phoenix resident and Roland Park graduate who transferred from North Carolina in the offseason, controlled four draws and compiled two goals and one assist, and Bosco finished with two draw controls while marking Duke’s top playmaker in graduate student midfielder Catriona Barry.
Ahearn said they and assistant coach Caitlyn Phipps developed a strategy to negate Jenner’s reach, which she had used to lead the country by averaging 12.1 draw controls per game.
“It was kind of to push the ball away from her and to my teammates on the circle,” Ahearn said. “It was to get the ball out into the circle if necessary and have the trust in my teammates for them to win them in the circle.”
A 10-0 run by the Terps in a 20:29 stretch spanning the second and third quarters was founded on nine consecutive draw controls — five by Ahearn, three by Smith, and two by Bosco. A Blue Devils team that entered the game ranked 10th in the country in shots per game at 34 managed just 13 attempts — their lowest total since at least 2017.
At times, Maryland appeared to be playing lacrosse’s version of make-it, take-it. Coach Cathy Reese credited Ahearn with honing her craft all season.
“She studies it, she works on it, it’s important to her, she competes at it,” Reese said. “We’ve had our ups and downs on the draw, and this has been something in the past couple of games where we’ve really seen our draw group really dial in on, and it’s been great. Duke has dominated the draw in most of their games all season long. So for us to make that area competitive, it was crucial to our success today.”
Jenner raised her NCAA single-season draw control record to 233, but had only four against Ahearn and the Terps — her lowest total since managing just two in a 15-5 loss to Syracuse on March 6, 2021. Blue Devils coach Kerstin Kimel deflected any finger-pointing.
“Certainly the loss does not go on Maddie’s shoulders whatsoever,” Kimel said. “We win as a team, we lose as a team. She can take the draw and potentially win it to herself at times, but everybody else has to chip in whether it was the kids on the retraining line or kids on the circle. And unfortunately, some of our draw circle kids were fouling, which gave them possession. That’s nothing that Maddie can do.”
With graduate student defender Katie Cosgrove face-guarding graduate student attacker Aurora Cordingley (one goal, one assist) and getting help from her Duke teammates, the Terps got plenty of spark from junior attacker and Hereford graduate Libby May (five goals, one assist), Marriotts Ridge graduate and sophomore attacker Eloise Clevenger and freshman midfielder Jordyn Lipkin (three goals, one assist each).
Barry paced the Blue Devils (16-4) with two goals and one assist, and sophomore midfielder Katie Keller chipped in two goals. After watching her team get dominated in shots (37-13) and ground balls (20-10), Kimel made a prediction about Maryland.
“I think they’ve got a life in them moving forward in the tournament, and I think that they will be a tough out,” she said.