W. Lax | Red hot start too much for Big Red

Against Cornell this weekend, junior midfield Ali DeLuca put away four goals, including one she has been working on all season - the fake flip.

"I think we have a lot of trouble on the flip and the fake flip," DeLuca said. "We've always practiced that all year, and [coach Karin Brower] really wants us to get that down, so it worked nicely."

Keyed by DeLuca's four tallies, the No. 3 Penn women's lacrosse team defeated the No. 14 Big Red, 14-2, Saturday at Franklin Field.

The Quakers (7-0, 2-0 Ivy) came out strong, scoring in the first three minutes of the game with an unassisted goal from junior Courtney Lubbe. But Penn wasn't done in the first half, and in fact went into the break up a commanding 10-0.

"It was a long two weeks, a lot of games, and we're a little banged up," Brower said. "The kids put it behind them for 60 minutes and came out hard."

The Quakers held possession for most of the first half. But eight minutes into the first frame, after calling a time out, Cornell (5-2, 1-1) stepped up its attack and forced Penn to play defense.

The Big Red, though, couldn't get the ball past junior goalkeeper Emily Szelest.

"Emily Szelest in the cage caused turnovers, and she had some nice saves," Brower said.

Even though the Quakers won by a steep margin, they admitted the score wasn't necessarily indicative of the game.

"Cornell is a really good team and they had the ball for a long time," junior Kaileigh Wright said. "It wasn't like a game where they didn't have the ball at all.

"We knew who their big players were at the end. They needed goals, and Karin kept telling us 'They're going to go to their big players.'"

In fact, Brower's gameplan played a key role in the victory.

"I think we scouted them really well," Wright said. "Karin does a really good job of getting us prepared for the motions they're going to be running and what kind of attack pressure going to be seeing."

The Red and Blue were able to remain calm offensively and anticipate Cornell's defensive matchups, which let them come away with a season high in goals scored.

"The attack really took their opportunities and finished on them, so it couldn't have gone better," Brower said.

Junior Emma Spiro and sophomore Giulia Giordano scored two goals each. Giordano made an unassisted free position goal in the first half at 24:47. Spiro scored her second goal of the game with four seconds left in the first half off an assist from senior Hannah Rudloff.

After a stacked schedule of top 20 teams in the last few weeks - evidenced by the number of Penn players sporting leg wraps on the field - the team looks forward to a break.

"We've got to give some kids a little bit of time off to recuperate. It just takes a lot to get through this stretch," Brower said. "To be 7-0 at this point in time and have a little bit of a break and no big, big game, we need it."

Penn's next game against a currently ranked team is April 11 versus No. 19 Dartmouth.

But the Quakers started their recuperation early, as every member of the team got to enjoy the fun against the Big Red.

"We got everybody in, so we love games like that," Brower said.

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