By Kevin Carroll – ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR
An impressive and historic season for the Hofstra women’s lacrosse team came to a premature end on Friday.
The top-seeded Pride was defeated in the CAA Tournament semifinals by #4 Towson 7-3 in an overtime thriller at Tubby Raymond Field, on the campus of the University of Delaware.
“It’s disappointing…it’s hard to swallow right now,” said head coach Shannon Smith after the heartbreaking overtime loss. “We weren’t scoring goals.”
Defense and stellar goalkeeping were the themes of the contest, as both teams struggled to gain separation on the scoreboard.
It wasn’t until just over eleven minutes into the game that Tiana Parrella broke Hofstra into the scoring column, finding the back of the net on an assist from CAA Player of the Year Brittain Altomare.
Lindsey Alfano followed up with a goal of her own four minutes later and Hofstra took control early, grabbing a 2-0 lead over the Tigers.
That score held up for the rest of the first half, as both Kelsey Gregerson of Hofstra and Kelsea Donnelly of Towson made great save after save, anchoring their respective defenses.
It took even longer for the first goal of the second half, but finally, almost halfway through the half, Towson’s Jenna Kerr took a pass from Kaitlyn Montalbano, and put Towson on the board, 2-1. Less than a minute later, Kerr struck again, scoring her second goal and bringing the Tigers even with Hofstra, tying things up at two.
Hofstra regrouped on defense, and the game slowed to a methodical pace once again, until Tiana Parrella scored her second goal of the game on a beautiful feed from Altomare, giving the Pride a 3-2 lead.
As the final couple minutes ticked away, Andi Raymond managed to sneak one past Gregerson to tie the game up once more. When the final whistle in regulation sounded, the score stood at a 3-3 tie and similar to the last time these two teams clashed, the game headed into overtime.
Unfortunately, this one wouldn’t play out quite like last time, where Hofstra gutted out an 8-7 double OT victory over the Tigers back in March.
Just over halfway through the overtime period, Hofstra was primed to take advantage when Towson received two yellow cards and having to play 7-on-5, but instead, Towson propelled forward with two goals just 13 seconds apart, going up 5-3 with just two minutes left.
In a last-ditch effort, the Pride pulled Gregerson out of the goal in favor of an extra attacker, but to no avail, as the Tigers scored two more times on the empty net to win by four, and eliminated the Pride from the CAA Tournament.
“Honestly, I don’t know what went through our kids’ heads, because I didn’t see the fight in them all season,” said Smith afterwards about the team’s overtime performance, in which Towson rattled off four goals, and held the Pride scoreless.
Parrella had two goals, with Alfano tacking on another one, to make up all the scoring by the Pride, with Altomare assisting on all three goals. Kelsey Gregerson had 10 saves for the Pride,and drops to 11-6. Hofstra will have to wait and see if they could snag an at-large bid into the NCAA tournament.
Andi Raymond had a hat trick to lead the Tigers to Sunday’s CAA title game against the second-seeded James Madison Dukes.