Syracuse women’s lacrosse goalie Jen Kasel can’t wait for Spring Break. But it’s not because she or anyone else on the Orange is going on vacation during the week off.

While some of their schoolmates will be sunbathing in Florida, the women’s lacrosse team couldn’t be happier staying in the North. With no classes comes more time for the Orange to focus on lacrosse and what it needs to do to recoup after a sound 15-7 defeat at the hands of Virginia on March 5.

SU plays three games over the week, beginning with a date this Saturday at perennial Big East champion Georgetown at 1 p.m. Syracuse has never beaten the Hoyas, and a win would put the Orange closer to its goal of winning the Big East for the first time in program history.

‘Over Spring Break we get to play lacrosse without the distraction of classes and get in some team bonding,’ Kasel said. ‘While everyone else is in Miami, we’re freezing together in Syracuse. It’s kinda good to play three games in the week. We can stay focused and get into a rhythm.’

And since the games are spread out across next week, the Orange can practice consistently and learn from mistakes it made in the previous game. After playing the Hoyas, SU makes two stops in Massachusetts. It faces Harvard on March 16 and Massachusetts on March 19.

Five of SU’s top ten scorers are either freshmen or sophomores and the defense is almost entirely underclassmen. Syracuse’s youth showed against Virginia, making costly turnovers and struggling to get the ball through midfield, and the time off from school could be helpful in getting the team acclimated to playing higher level competition, like Virginia or Georgetown.

‘I don’t think they were accustomed to the ferocity Virginia brought to the game,’ said Syracuse head coach Lisa Miller. ‘When you look at our roster and see all the young players, teams want to play us like that. We need to be ready for it against Georgetown.’

And with no games earlier this week and no classes next week, Syracuse is able to meticulously prepare for the Hoyas.

The Orange wants to work on winning draws early in the game. SU struggled to control draws in its first two games, and the weakness became even more apparent against the Cavaliers when the Orange lost six in a row. Those draws eventually turned into the goals that blew open the game for UVA.

‘It would be a great boost after losing to Virginia,’ Kasel said. ‘We’re hoping to take the mistakes we made against Virginia and correct them against Georgetown. Beating Georgetown as the first team we face and as the team to beat in the Big East, it’s exciting and important.’

And as anxious as the Orange is to putting the Virginia game in the past, it is even more excited about the first Big East match of the year.

Before the season started, senior Monica Joines targeted this Saturday as the day to see if the Orange would challenge Georgetown for the Big East crown. Now Spring Break is here, and so is Syracuse’s chance to do something it has never done before.

‘We practice to beat Georgetown each year,’ Joines said after the Virginia game. ‘That’s basically the game I look forward to every year. That’s what’s really going to decide what our postseason looks like. It would be wonderful to have a home seed, and that means we’d have to win the Big East and beat Georgetown. The whole team is looking forward to it.’

Published on March 8, 2005 at 12:00 pm