The Mavericks women’s lacrosse team is coming off a historic season, and they are looking to shake up the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) again this season.
Head Coach Shanta Loecker in her first season at Colorado Mesa University (CMU) turned heads in 2019 as she led the Mavericks to a 15-4 record and their first NCAA Tournament leading to a win against their RMAC rival Lindenwood University in the first round. The Mavericks are coming into the season as the preseason number 14 team in the nation and were chosen to finish second in the RMAC behind Regis University.
In Loecker’s second season, she added Ashley Delaney to the staff who played Division Ⅰ lacrosse for four-years at Long Island University – Brooklyn, and she coached TEAM Lacrosse overseeing the elite high school, middle school, peewee and developmental programs. In 2018 and 2019 Delaney was an assistant coach at Muhlenberg College, a Division Ⅲ school in Allentown, Pa.
“Big picture standards went up, and that’s a good thing, anytime you feel something is possible as a team, I think it really ups the motivation to put the work in every day,” Loecker said. “That said, we are still very focused on our daily improvement, and setting tangible goals right now that hopefully, we can see tomorrow, and then we do something great tomorrow, then hopefully we can see Saturday. So we’re not thinking about May, tournaments or anything like that yet.”
The Mavericks will be without 13 players including midfielder Olivia Hayden, attacker Paige Elliot, attacker Marissa Leonardi, attacker Mary Koch, midfielder Lexi Alford, defender Erin Koehler and midfielder Danielle Simpson in 2020.
Hayden and Koehler were the first Mavericks to ever be nominated as All-Americans, and Hayden was a huge part of the offense last year as she scored 62 goals with 15 assists in her senior season. Hayden also took the majority of the draws for the team as she won 178 draw controls.
“Kenzie, I think maybe will be a little bit of a surprise because we have been working with her on some different things, from putting her on the draw circle, she’s been working on her defensive stuff and just kind of taking advantage of some of her other strengths that maybe we didn’t see as much of last year,” Loecker said.
The Mavericks will be returning 11 players including junior attacker Kenzie Blackwell, sophomore attacker Maeve Hungerford, sophomore midfielder Ashton Whittle and junior defender Raquel Ruhme this season. Blackwell is set to be one of the top options and leader for the Mavericks in 2020 along with Whittle who is set to take over some of the roles Hayden had last year, and Whittle has large shoes to fill, but her talent and effort can take her there.
“We are a pretty young team, but we have a lot of really young leaders, so like yeah I’m going to be the best leader I can be, but a lot of the freshman and sophomores have already proven that they want to step up and they want to be a leader in whatever way they can on and off the field,” Blackwell said.
Attacker Cassie Barragan transferred to CMU from Winthrop University, but she only played four games without starting in any of them. In high school, Barragan was on varsity for three years and compiled 150 goals with 43 assists and she shot .622 percent throughout her career.
The Mavericks will be returning both of their goaltenders Lula Mitchell and Cami Huff to anchor their defense and provide a calming presence on the field. Mitchell got most of the time in net as she registered 825:22 minutes in the net and she allowed 144 goals and 94 saves on 326 shots faced. Mitchell also won 11 games for CMU and only lost three games.
Huff only played 285:35 minutes with 18 goals allowed and 20 saves on 60 shots faced and is primed to play a bigger role for the Mavericks, and last season’s experience will help her control the defense and talk through the rotations and slides that will need to be made. Huff had a 3.78 goals-against average as she led CMU to four wins and no losses when she started in net.
“For us, defense is everything right now, it’s pretty much what we’ve been focusing on, like 90 percent of our practices have been focused on defense, and so obviously the goalies are a huge part of that,” Loecker said “It definitely helps to have two returners, that I think are more confident and more fit this year than they were last year, so we are going to see some improvement out of them, and between the two of them sometimes you just have no idea who is going to show up and have a phenomenal day.”
However, the Mavericks have nine freshmen coming in and they are hoping for big contributions from them all over the field. In their two scrimmages of the season against Bringham Young University and Colorado College, CMU started four freshmen as they are looking to find their starting lineup going into a tough matchup against Lindenwood University.
“This weekend felt awesome, putting our defense out there and seeing the pieces come together, and then seeing how our offense can connect when we are just brand new when we are just working with each other,” Blackwell said. “I think that this weekend was just kind of the beginning and it’s just going to be a snowball effect and that we are just going to keep building and growing and I think some great things are going to happen.”
The Mavericks have four new midfielders with Regan Wentz, Xcaret Salvador, Lauren Wick and Taylor Jakeman and with only two other midfielders on the roster, the Mavericks will look to their freshmen to contribute on the offensive and defensive end. With a lot of moving pieces on offense, attackers Erika Farrage, Melanie Evans and Brianna Anderson will also have an opportunity to make a big impact on this Mavericks offense.
