No. 13 Stanford women’s lacrosse (0-1, 0-0 Pac-12) traveled to New York to take on No. 3 Syracuse (1-0, 0-0 ACC) on Friday. Although the Cardinal took an early lead, the Orange prevailed 12-9.
Attacker Olivia Adamson opened the scoring for the Orange less than a minute into the game. The Cardinal responded with three quick goals from senior midfielder Caitlin Chicoski, redshirt freshman attacker Sarah Jaques and sophomore midfielder Ailish Kelly in a four-minute stretch.
After Syracuse knotted the game at three, Kelly hit a behind-the-back shot to give Stanford the lead entering the second quarter.
The second quarter featured a showdown between Stanford freshman midfielder Annabel Frist and Syracuse attacker Meaghan Tyrrell. The two were the only to record goals in the period, with Tyrrell posting a first-half hat trick and Frist adding two of her own. Frist also finished the game with a hat trick.
“That’s great for her early in her career, to build confidence in herself,” said head coach Danielle Spencer about Frist. “We’ve seen that from her in practice, but for her to do that so bravely against Syracuse as a freshman is awesome.”
The Cardinal were held scoreless in a defensive third quarter, and Syracuse was able to extend its lead thanks to Meaghan and Emma Tyrrell’s second and fourth goals of the night, respectively. Stanford was never able to make up this deficit, eventually losing 12-9. The Tyrrell sisters proved to be too much for the Cardinal to handle, combining for eight goals in the Syracuse victory.
Despite the loss, Spencer remains optimistic about the rest of the season.
“Overall, I’m proud of the way that we battled,” Spencer said. “I thought we had some individual performances that were strong and exciting to set the tone for the season.”
Two of the team’s strong individual performances came from junior goalkeeper Kara Rahaim and redshirt freshman attacker Ashley Humphrey. Rahaim had an impressive season debut in the net, making 12 saves in the contest. Humphrey contributed five assists.
The Cardinal were able to remain competitive against a top-three team in the country even without fifth-year attacker Ali Baiocco, who was recently named to the Tewaaraton Award Watchlist, which honors the top college lacrosse players.
Stanford will stay in New York for the remainder of the weekend and take on Albany on Sunday afternoon. The Cardinal are ready to bounce back, but Spencer acknowledges that it will not be easy.
“It’s a challenge for sure,” Spencer said. “But I think the team is hungry to take what went well from Syracuse and take some of the fire that we clearly displayed and fuel that towards Albany tomorrow.”
Sunday’s game will begin at 10 a.m. PT.