Heavy loss at Varsity, but women's team mood still up beat.
The women's team heads still remained high despite a 25-1 loss against Keele at Varsity.
A new event for Varsity and the most one-sided match of the day, as Keele beat Staffordshire 25-1 in the women’s lacrosse.
Staffs women’s lacrosse team, who are in their first year in existence stopped the Keele onslaught by scoring the first goal of the third quarter. A neat individual move from Staffs top goal scorer this season Elena Morrison, managed to fire the ball in off Keele’s right hand post.
After an epic encounter in the men’s match, fans were expecting another tight one. But the game was all but over after the first quarter.
Six unanswered goals in the opening quarter that included a free shot, made it hard for the Staffs women to make any sort of a come back. But it could have been a lot more if it was not for the saves from goalkeeper Sian Davies, who made several spectacular saves. Staffs only made a handful of attacks into Keele’s half as it seemed the hosts were closing out all of Staffs main goal threats such as Elena Morrison, Nicola Steadman and Anna Balonier.
The second quarter didn’t start off well for the visitors as one of Staffs players was given a yellow card as they began the quarter with too many players on the pitch. This offence began to grow into more as one of two of the referee’s looked like they wanted to become the star of the match.
Four more goals made Keele’s goal tally go into double figures. After that came a few threatening chances from Staffs, including a free shot which was taken by Steadman, but the Keele goalie managed to save it and get it away from danger.
Before half time Keele managed to scored four more goals, including two that were controversially free shots, as the ref claimed to have seen the Staffs goalie come out of her crease to collect the ball.
In recent league matches, Staffs women seemed to do better in the second half. This was proved in the first few minutes of the third quarter as Staffs got their first goal of the match. After numerous threats around the Keele fan, top goal scorer Morrison managed to find space behind Keele’s goal. She worked her way round the fan to have a shot on goal that went in off Keele’s right hand post.
This frustrated Keele for most of the third quarter as it took them a while to get back into a threatening looking side. They eventually increased their goal tally to seventeen.
Keele finished this match as they began, by making this result look embarrassing for the Staffs team.Keele scored eight more goals, including two more controversial free shots from the referee.
Despite the heavy loss, Staffs captain Roberta Spain and vice-captain Izzy Wilding were proud to get women’s Lacrosse into Varsity and to improve these girl abilities over the season despite never even picking up a stick before joining this University.