Double Lacrossed
Dukes lose to Fighting Irish in overtime
By John Galle, sports editor
Posted on February 22, 2007

Notre Dame may have taken the win in the dogfight at Charlottesville, but it didn’t take the fight out of the Dukes.

Last Sunday, just four days after the preseason coaches’ poll unanimously predicted Madison to win its second Colonial Athletic Association lacrosse championship in as many years, No. 12 JMU was iced out of Harrisonburg and forced to play its season/home opener at the University of Virginia.

However, it was hardly a neutral site.

“We had a tremendous amount of support there,” JMU senior midfielder Kelly Berger said. “At some points the refs couldn’t hear ... [and] our bench was the loudest I’ve ever heard them.”

Despite the overwhelming crowd support, Madison fell to No. 5 Fighting Irish 10-9 in double-overtime.

But the Dukes aren’t hanging their heads.

“Notre Dame was a complete learning experience,” said Berger, who was recently added to the 2007 “Watch List” for the Tewaaraton Trophy, given to the top college lacrosse player in the nation. “Losses aren’t always a bad thing, you do learn from them.”

One thing Madison learned was that it is nowhere near its potential, even though the Dukes nearly showed up a 2006 Final Four team in Notre Dame.

“We’re going to be so much better than what we are right now,” Berger said. “We practice more than we play games, so we learn every day with how [Klaes-Bawcombe] is teaching us to play and the plays we’re setting up and all that good stuff.”

The Dukes returned to Harrisonburg with two positive realizations: Junior Kelly Wetzel is perfectly capable of replacing the graduated Livvy King in the cage, and their new offense works.

In Wetzel’s first game as a starter, she was thrust into the spotlight and responded with 17 saves against the Irish’s game-high 35 shots.

“Kelly [Wetzel] embraced it with open arms,” JMU senior defender Kylee Dardine said. “She stepped up to the plate, came up with huge saves, huge clears … 17 saves is not easy to make in a game, especially against the No. 5 team in the country.”

On offense, the Dukes got the balance Klaes-Bawcombe envisioned prior to her first game as JMU’s head coach. In regulation, Madison didn’t have one leading scorer: it had three.

Junior attackers Natasha Fuchs and Annie Wagner, along with senior tri-captain attacker Maria Bosica each scored twice.

“In overtime, [Notre Dame] was marking out Fuchs and Wagner and they did not mark out Berger,” Klaes-Bawcombe said.

Berger took advantage of the scenario by putting in two goals in the first overtime period to give JMU a 9-7 lead, finishing the game with a team-high three scores.

“If we can continue to recognize their strategy [in who they’re trying] to take out, we can always attack from another perspective,” Klaes-Bawcombe said. “That’s going to be a huge advantage for us this season.”

Berger said the Dukes had plenty of opportunities to put the game away, both on offense and defense. Klaes-Bawcombe also said her team was more than capable of beating the Irish, but couldn’t control the tempo after making key plays.

“We were a little weak mentally and that’s where we lost the game,” Klaes-Bawcombe said. “It wasn’t in our ability; it wasn’t in our fight … it [wasn’t] the new system. I think it was the first game of the season, you know, preseason jitters. And they definitely learned a huge lesson, and that’s why we schedule teams like Notre Dame early in the season, so we can learn from the get-go what we need to do to contend for a top spot in the nation.”