Strong Team Effort Leads to Season-Opening Victory for Women's Lacrosse

2/20/2021 4:56:00 PM | By: Luke Potosky, Staff Writer

Box Score ADA, Ohio -- A lot has changed since 346 days ago when John Carroll University Women's Lacrosse last took the field in a 19-17 loss at Oberlin College.

After not having fall ball and going through times when they didn't know if they would have a season, the Blue Streaks were fired up to open their 2021 campaign. Despite 20-degree weather and a foot of snow around the field, that didn't stop the excitement of a new season for the Blue and Gold.

On Saturday, Feb. 20, John Carroll defeated Ohio Northern 24-8 at Dial-Roberson Stadium in Ada to start the year 1-0.

To open things up, Ohio Northern came out firing on all cylinders as they scored the first three goals, prompting a quick timeout by JCU Head Coach Rachel Dell.

After that, the Blue Streaks opened the floodgates in terms of goal scoring.

John Carroll went on a 7-2 scoring spree shortly after the timeout, sparked by three goals from Colleen Grombala, two goals from Jenna Ginsberg, and two goals from Olivia Gerlach.

The Blue and Gold didn't stop there, as they added on another nine goals by the end of the first half to make the score 16-6 going into halftime.

Lauren Schwartz, Claire Mezzoprete, Carly Ross, Mary Doherty, Lainey Donalson, and Kendall Gessner were among those to add their name to the scoring column. Grombala finished the first half with five goals and Ginsberg had three.

As a team, JCU outshot ONU 35-9, did excellent in transition play with 10/10 clears, and forced
14 Polar Bear turnovers.

In the second half, John Carroll kept their foot on the gas pedal, as Jenna Ginsberg scored her fourth and fifth goals of the game in the first two minutes of play.

Then, following an Ohio Northern penalty, Carly Ross scored to capitalize on the man-up opportunity. Caylin Perryman followed Ross up with her first goal of the contest, and then Colleen Grombala scored her sixth and seventh goals of the contest.

Finally, a little bit later, Lainey Donalson and Emma Workman put a cap on things as the Blue Streaks pulled out a 24-8 win.

As a team, JCU had 24 goals on 50 shots, had 29 groundballs, and had nearly flawless transition all game with 13 clears out of 16 tries. Furthermore, the stingy Blue Streak defense forced 23 Polar Bear turnovers.

Point-wise, the leaders for the Blue and Gold were Colleen Grombala with seven (all goals), Jenna Ginsberg with five (all goals), and Alex Heishman (one goal, two credited assists).

Coach Dell had a plethora of positive takeaways from the 16-goal victory as well.

"We had 12 players collect points and I felt like we dominated the possession game," said the veteran coach. "I'm happy that 40 out of 50 shots were on cage."

Dell went on to say that this was an improvement from past years.

"Our defense rode the midfield hard, remained strong, and protected the 8 from a lot of drives. We were happy with the number of caused turnovers today," Dell said of the stingy JCU defense.

In particular, the performance of fifth-year senior Colleen Grombala stood out to her. Despite a ONU's focus on stopping her, the veteran thrived.

"Grombala was face-guarded the entire game; she is a tough player to battle through that kind of pressure and collect the stats that she did today. It's great to have her back for a fifth year."

John Carroll will be back in action on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. as they make their home debut against Heidelberg.

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