By Nathan Soloman, Sports Assignment Editor
After an 11-month lay-off, the St. Bonaventure Women’s Lacrosse team is back in action on Friday. Coming off a 5-2 COVID-19 shortened season, the Bonnies look to continue last year’s success with an 11-game slate under second-year coach Jason Levesque.
“Everyone’s just anxious and excited to get back on the field,” Levesque said. “[Players] were excited to get back on the field for practices and be back on campus, but getting to go out and compete against somebody else is the biggest thing that everyone’s looking forward to.”
Women’s lacrosse players returned to campus at the end of January and began practice soon after. They’ve battled the wild Western New York weather to get work in, and their efforts have paid off.
“We’ve put a lot of work in,” said sophomore psychology Jerica Obee. “We’re coming out every day and giving it our all and I think our team is looking pretty ready for our first game.”
Levesque’s group for the 2021 season includes 10 seniors; three of which are using their fifth year of eligibility permitted by the NCAA due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“[They are] a great group that brings us different things in different areas,” Levesque said. “We’ve got some leadership up-front with Destinee Johnson coming back for a fifth-year, Andrea Hill coming back as a fifth-year on the defensive side, [and Jessica] Losquadro and [Savannah] Gonsiorek, who are two main-stays on our back end.”
Joining the 10 seniors are a group of 10 freshmen, coming from as near as Buffalo and as far as Colorado.
“We will definitely have some freshmen seeing some valuable minutes for us this year,” Levesque said. “I’ve been very impressed with them…. they’ve done such a great job of just rolling with the punches.”
Led by Johnson, all five of the Bonnies’ top scorers from last season are back in the brown and white for this season. Johnson scored 23 points, while Nora Anderson, Julia Davidson, Ashley Easterday and Courtney Fox each added nine or more points in the abbreviated 2020 season.
“It’s important for sure to return the scoring,” Levesque said. “One thing we’ve also stressed is that those girls are going to get their points and other girls are going to need to step up if we are going to continue to advance and win more games.”
Included on this year’s schedule are non-conference matchups with Colgate, Albany, and Akron. The Bonnies will travel to Colgate on Friday and Albany next Thursday, then will return home to host Akron on March 20.
“[Our schedule] challenges us right out of the gate,” Levesque said. “Colgate is a phenomenal program; great coach, great staff [and] the Patriot League is a really good league. Albany is another quality program…. it opens our eyes as to what level of play we need to get to.”
For Atlantic 10 games, the conference split the teams into separate pods, each team playing their pod opponents twice. Included in the Bonnies’ pod is Duquesne, Saint Joseph’s, UMass and La Salle.
“Saint Joseph’s and UMass are in our pod, and both of those teams are perennially in the top-4,” Levesque said. “All roads have to go through them eventually, so it’s great we get to look at both of those teams twice this spring.”
And under the circumstances of the season, the goal for the Bonnies is to just keep building up. With COVID-19 still a factor and a young coach, St. Bonaventure is looking to continue their ascend up the A-10 standings after going just 1-33 in the two seasons prior to Levesque’s tenure.
“Playing on more of a consistent basis is key,” Levesque said. “Playing the rest of [last] season out really would’ve gone a long way in terms of our development as a program, learning how to win, learning how to play consistently [and] not taking any plays off or any game for granted.”
But for the players, they’re just happy to finally be able to play the sport they love.
“It’s going to be absolutely surreal,” said Emily Mahon, sophomore adolescence education and history double major. “Now that after such a long time, getting back on the field and playing the game that we love is just going to be an awesome feeling.”
solomon20@bonaventure.edu
