The Sacred Heart University women’s lacrosse team is 2-6 so far this season. That being said, they have yet to play any conference games and four of their six losses have been by three goals or less.
Sacred Heart is led by senior attacker Lydia Werlau who leads the team with 27 total points off 20 goals and seven assists. On March 7, she was named Northeast Conference (NEC) player of the week.
This is the fifth time that Werlau has won an NEC player of the week award.
“A lot of my success has to do with our coaching staff, but also the girls on the team this year,” said Werlau. “All the girls on the team have been putting in effort throughout practice and throughout this whole season so that they can set themselves up for success and set each other up for success.”
Werlau has turned a lot of heads this season, including that of her head coach, Laura Korutz.
“I’m always impressed by Lydia’s performance, and she has really improved in her senior year,” said Korutz. “She has taken strides this year and really turned into a bigger threat than she’s been in years past.”
Werlau just reached a personal milestone as well, having scored her 100th collegiate goal against Fairfield University on March 19.
“That was definitely a really big milestone for me and it was really awesome to have the team that we have this year because everyone is really close and we always try to hype each other up,” said Werlau.
The Pioneers are heading into conference play looking to improve on their 2-6 record and make a push for the playoffs.
“I believe that our team has an immense amount of potential,” said senior defender Claire McElhenny. “Once we start believing in ourselves, I feel like there are going to be really successful outcomes.”
The team has some things that they are looking to clean up for the start of conference play.
“First and foremost, we have to focus on limiting our turnovers,” Korutz said. “That has to be our main area of focus over this next week before we head into Bryant. If we can do that, I think we’re going to be more successful and we are going to see different results.”
Having good team chemistry is another factor that the team recognizes needs to be strong in order to have success.
“We always say it has to do with the girl who won the draw, the goalie that made the save, the girl who caused the turnover, the girl that set the pick, the girl that assisted,” said Werlau.
Feeding off of one another allows each player to not only make themselves better, but make their teammates better as well.
“We work hard for one another and every single day we push each other to be the best that we can be because everyone on this team has such great potential and it’s awesome that everyone can push each other to get to that potential,” said McElhenny.
Sacred Heart begins conference play against Bryant University on Wednesday, March 30 at 3 p.m. at Campus Field.
Sacred Heart Athletics contributed to this article.