Kennesaw State women’s lacrosse dominated their 2023 season opener against the Reinhardt University Eagles in a high scoring 22-4 game on Friday, Feb. 10.
KSU had 11 players finish with at least one goal.
Throughout the game, five players posted hat tricks. Scoring three goals each for KSU were Mia MacKenzie, Hannah Barth, Caroline Farley, Abbey Behn and Shannon Harrington. MacKenzie reached a game-high of five points while adding two assists to the collection. Behn and Harrington set new career bests while MacKenzie, Barth and Farley tied their career highs.The Owls got off to an early lead with a 4-0 score in less than five minutes into the contest. KSU managed to make it to 7-0 before Reinhardt scored their first goal of the game. Following the Eagles’ first goal, the Owls answered with four consecutive goals, extending the lead to 11-1 at the end of the first quarter. In the second quarter, KSU completely silenced the Eagles defensively by going up 15-1 before the half. In the second half, the Owls outscored Reinhardt 7-3 ending the matchup with a 22-4 final score.
“I feel great about today’s win,” Head Coach Laura Maness said. “I think the team took everything we were pushing them to do in practice and applied it to the game which is great. We had a lot of players who have never played before and seeing them shine right away was really exciting.
Maness also discussed thoughts on finishing with 22 goals and 12 assists.
“This year, we focused on really quick ball movement, trusting each other, and finding the best possible scoring option,” Maness said. “Having so many of those goals being assisted and so much diversity in our scoring, I think it is going to make us really hard to defend in future games.”
Maness also raved about KSU’s defense only allowing four goals from Reinhardt.
“The defense did a great job. We held them to four goals, so hats off to them. I thought they showed composure and understood their matchups. I think holding only two girls from the other team to scoring opportunities was what shut them down and limited their scoring opportunities.”
“We also won the ground ball game by a ton, but really a lot of that was in the backfield with our defenders being scrappy and aggressive,” Maness continued. The Owls will return home on Sunday, Feb. 19 to compete against Longwood starting at 11 a.m.
