I’ll bet you didn’t know Franklin & Marshall’s women’s lacrosse team is ranked No. 1 in the country. I ventured over to F&M on Thursday to get a glimpse of the Diplomats as they prepped for the Centennial Conference playoffs, on tap for this weekend at F&M. Nothing like home-advantage in the playoffs. The Diplomats are 15-0, the top seed in the playoffs, and are ranked No. 1 in a pair of Division 3 polls. They are led by a pair of scrappy defenders. Here’s their story, which appears in Friday’s New Era:
It is one of the most overused clichés in sports.
“But it is a profound saying,” Franklin & Marshall women’s lacrosse coach Anne Phillips said. “Offense wins games, but defense wins championships.”
Thanks to a suffocating, nationally ranked defense, the Diplomats are in line to win a championship – the Centennial Conference title, which is up for grabs Saturday and Sunday at F&M, which is hosting the Final Four.
The Diplomats will take on McDaniel in one semifinal Saturday at 1 p.m., followed by Dickinson and Gettysburg at 3 p.m. The winners meet Sunday at 1 p.m., with the winner getting an automatic bid to the NCAA playoffs.
F&M brings three things into the conference semifinals:
A 15-0 record.
The No. 1 seed in the four-team field.
And the crème de la crème: The Diplomats are the top-ranked Division III team in the nation in two polls – the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Association poll, and the laxpower.com poll.
“They’re playing confidently, but I don’t think they’re overconfident,” Phillips said of her team, which knocked off nine top 20-ranked teams in the nation this spring, including a pair of clubs that were in the top five.
The 15 wins also ties the program’s record for the longest winning streak, set in 1991.
“I don’t think they’re arrogant, and I don’t think they have big heads,” Phillips said. “And they understand that all of this can go away in one game.”
Seniors Em Gill and Sloan Giampa, who lead the defensive unit, are determined not to let that happen any time soon. That tandem, which played lacrosse together in high school at Yorktown in New York, handles the captain duties along with senior midfielder Kelly Cassels.
With 30 goals and 15 assists, Cassels has helped F&M pile up 231 goals – a conference-best 15.4 goals per game — while Gill, Giampa and the defensive crew have allowed just 87 goals against – the least in the league.
Hence the 15-game winning streak, and the top spot in a pair of national rankings.
“It’s been insane around here,” Gill said. “The first day that we were ranked No. 1 we were out of our minds. But we’ve calmed down since then. The worst thing to do would be to get caught up in all of this and as a result not play well. So we’re trying to stay focused. But the ranking and all of that has definitely motivated us.”
Especially on the defense end, where the Diplomats, keyed by defenders Gill, Giampa, sophomores Amanda Miceli and Sarah Nyman, plus freshman goalie Lidia Sanza, have been as tough as nails.
F&M is allowing just 5.8 goals per game – sixth in the country. The Diplomats also force 10.8 turnovers per game – 38th in the country. And when it comes to fouls, nobody in the conference commits fewer of them than F&M, which has just 73 fouls in 15 games, by far the least in the conference.
Here’s the interesting thing about those defenders: Giampa played midfield her first three years in F&M’s program, before being switched to defender this fall. So she’s still learning on the go. But she didn’t complain about the move, and has been dynamite playing in the back with Gill, her former scholastic teammate.
Miceli and Nyman are sophomores who are still getting the hang of things. But with Gill and Giampa flanking them, they’re learning new tricks of the defensive trade every day.
And then there’s Sanza, who allowed just 5.99 goals per game during the regular season, tops in the league. She’s till a tad wet behind the years, but the defenders in front of her have been so steady that she’s rarely tested. Sanza was second in the conference in save percentage (.544) and led the conference in goals against.
“With two sophomore defenders and a freshman goalie, we had to be solid defensively right away,” Phillips noted. “And I’m feeling really good about our defense right now. Teams that have played against us see that we have a high-powered offense. But what’s frustrating for them is that they can’t get in there against our defense and score goals.”
As good as F&M’s defense is the Diplomats score a lot of goals.
F&M is eighth is the NCAA in scoring offense (15.4 goals per game) and fifth in scoring margin (9.6). Talk about firepower: The Diplomats’ Jen Pritchard (53 goals, 12 assists), Shannon Summers (41 goals, 19 assists) and Blake Hargest (29 goals, 26 assists), are 1-2-3 in the Centennial Conference in points per game.
“We’ve lit up a lot of teams,” Phillips said. “But we’ve definitely gotten stronger defensively. If you can’t move the ball through a defense, you’re not going to win. And that’s where teams have struggled against us.”
Playing defense can be a thankless job. You rarely crack the stat column ‑ defenders can’t cross the midfield stripe, so they rarely accumulate points, let alone get many assists.
“Our accomplishment,” Giampa said, “is seeing the other team get frustrated because they can’t get a good shot off. That’s one of the greatest feelings ever.”
The feeling of being the No. 1-ranked team in the country heading into the conference playoffs isn’t so bad, either. Now it’s up the Diplomats to defend their home field, take care of business and prove to everyone that they belong on that high perch.
“This is still all sort of unbelievable,” Giampa said. “Some of us still can’t believe that we’re actually ranked No. 1 in the country and that we’re doing this well. We never thought we’d be here, so we’re having fun with it … we’re enjoying the ride.”
Nobody can say for sure where this ride is going to end. But for F&M’s women’s lacrosse team, it’s already been a magical journey.
JEFFREY REINHART
