Women’s Lacrosse Notebook: Watson scores six in season opener

The women’s lacrosse team start­ed off its sea­son with an explo­sive 19–12 vic­to­ry at home on Wednes­day. Most of the goals came from junior mid­field­er Syd­ney Wat­son, who scored six out of the 19 with only 10 shots taken.

“I wouldn’t have got­ten [six goals] if it weren’t for any of my team­mates,” Wat­son said. “I just want to make sure I can set every­one up for suc­cess and when they set me up for suc­cess, I want to be able to fin­ish it for them.”

Wat­son wasn’t the only play­er with a big con­tri­bu­tion from last night’s match. Senior mid­field­er Olivia Miles had the sec­ond most goals: four with only six shots taken.

Since the team is filled with younger play­ers, Wat­son said the team’s men­tal­i­ty is “com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent” com­pared to last season.

Huskies take down Fair­field to open the 2020 cam­paign! #Bleed­Blue pic.twitter.com/rHeX4jB3EN

— UConn Lacrosse (@UConnWLAX) Feb­ru­ary 12, 2020

“All fall, we had such high ener­gy and pos­i­tiv­i­ty, and I believe our cap­tains and our seniors have real­ly brought that ener­gy for us and all of us are able to fol­low along with them,” Wat­son said. “Every­one on this team wants to win, wants to keep the ener­gy high, and it’s just real­ly great this year.”

With their sec­ond match of the sea­son com­ing up on Sun­day against James Madi­son on the road, the Huskies will look to bring high ener­gy going in and out of the game regard­less of the scoreboard.

“We know James Madi­son in the past has been real­ly good,” Wat­son said. “This year we want to … bring it and hope­ful­ly give them a good competition.”

It’s clear that Wat­son will be a key play­er once more this sea­son and for good rea­son. She was unan­i­mous­ly select­ed for the AAC Pre­sea­son All-Con­fer­ence Team after hav­ing 39 goals to her name along with 51 points and 92 draw con­trols last season.

Wat­son scored her first hat trick of the sea­son with­in the first half: The first being at the 16th minute to bring the Huskies up 5–3, the sec­ond about 30 sec­onds lat­er with junior attack­er Stephanie Pal­muc­ci for the assist, and the third about a minute lat­er after she was giv­en a free posi­tion shot and brought the Huskies up to 7–3. Wat­son scored her fourth about three min­utes into the sec­ond half and her fifth short­ly after with sopho­more Casey O’Grady pro­vid­ing the assist. Watson’s last goal of the match came at the 40th minute.