Success is the sum of small efforts for St. Joe’s women’s lacrosse, who have won eight of their last nine games this season.
“It’s the little things all over the field that you’ll see improvement within our stats throughout the season,” Head Coach Alex Kahoe said. “It’s all those little things that come together and ultimately take care of the outcome.”
After starting the season 0-4, the Hawks are now 9-6 with a 6-1 record in the Atlantic 10 (A-10) conference.
Senior midfielder Emma O’Neill said starting the season this way only aided the team in their overall improvement as the season progressed.
“After every game, you learn something new about the team as a whole and what you need to work on,” O’Neill said. “You just really hone in on those and improve.”
Kahoe said that each loss served as an opportunity to get the team to where they are currently and where they hope to be.
“We don’t want to be at our best in February,” Kahoe said. “We want to be at our best when we’re playing for an A-10 championship.”
According to Kahoe, in order to be their best, the team has to focus on their values of hard work, excellence, attitude and trust, or HEAT.
“We try to play St. Joe’s lacrosse,” Kahoe said. “We do that by building on our fundamentals, staying disciplined and constantly getting better every day.”
According to senior midfielder Riley Evans, these values are at the core of what it means to play St. Joe’s lacrosse.
“We’re such a hard working and gritty team,” Evans said. “We just play our game.”
Evans said that things started to click for the team after their first win against Towson University March 1.
“It was a home game underneath the lights, and I think we all came out hungry for a win,” Evans said. “I think from then on we’ve had more of a drive in every single game.”
This drive carried over into their conference play after the team secured a 19-0 win to record the first shutout in program history.
“We really try to focus on the small successes that we were having,” Kahoe said. “But to have those small successes built into an overall team win of 19-0 in the first conference play, that can just help with confidence and with overall morale.”
O’Neill said that the reminder that each game is an opportunity to play the game they love has also been a factor in their success this season.
“We all have so much fun, and that’s what we’ve started doing in the past couple games,” O’Neill said. “I think that’s one of the reasons it’s been clicking so well.”
With this in mind, there is not much more that needs to be done to motivate the team, Kahoe said.
“Getting to play the sport you love with people that you love every single day, you want this to last as long as possible,” Kahoe said. “They keep going in and doing it for each other.”
The team’s bond comes from one of their core values, trust, Evans said.
“We always say that our team is a family,” Evans said. “It really helps when you can trust every single person on our team, whether you’re on the field or you’re not playing a game.”
Kahoe said that the team’s 2022 A-10 Championship win has also contributed to the team’s chemistry this season.
“The thing that’s great about our team this year is at least three quarters of them have had the taste of what it’s like to win a championship,” Kahoe said. “Once you have that feeling, you want to experience that over and over again.”
These shared experiences between the veterans on the team have helped them set up younger players for success.
“We’ve been in a lot of these positions before, and it’s just reminding everyone on the field that it’s OK to make mistakes,” O’Neill said. “It’s not always gonna go your way, but you can’t be worried about one thing when you have the bigger picture.”
As the Hawks approach their final two games of the regular season, Kahoe said they’re taking things one game at a time.
“It’s really just important for us to stay in the moment,” Kahoe said. “At this point, we’re fine tuning pieces of ourselves, again, so that when it comes to A-10 tournament time, we’re the best team we can be.”
