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A small bump in the road to the CC playoffs won’t stop men’s lacrosse

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Grossman works off an Immaculata defender in 2018. Photo Courtesy of Muhlenberg Athletics

The men’s lacrosse team ended the week with a Friday night game against the 4-6 Washington College. The men looked to add to their impressive 5 game winning streak. The game did not go as they had planned, leaving the Mules faced with a two game losing streak. With a final score of 7-6, this marked the second time in a row in which the Mules only lost by one goal.

Even with the torubles, standout James Dalimonte ‘22 completed a hat trick while Brandon Moyer ‘21, Ethan Grossman ‘21, and Cooper Richards ‘22 all contributed with one tally each.  

Attacker and leading scorer Grossman reflected on the loss and sees it as a great opportunity for the team to grow.

“To get the momentum back in our favor,” said Grossman, “we have to learn from our mistakes in the previous games and just focus on the game right ahead of us.”

While the game ended in unfortunate fashion, Grossman met a personal accomplishment, breaking Mickey Norton’s career points record, becoming the sole leader of goals scored with 124 in his 29 game Muhlenberg career.

Grossman ’21 became the all-time leader in goals scored with 129. Photo Courtesy of Muhlenberg Athletics

“It feels great breaking the career points record,” said Grossman. “I have worked so hard on my game, putting in hours and hours into my craft and it just shows that my hard work has paid off.”

However, Grossman has yet to put behind that his achievement came in a losing effort: “Although I broke the record it still came on a loss so we must work hard as a team to bounce back.”

With the snapping of their two game losing streak on the line, in a tough game against Swarthmore, the team looked to move forward and determined to turn it around.

“I’d say the game plan for Swathmore was just to keep it simple with minimal turnovers,” Grossman added.

“The plan of attack is  the same it had been all year, nothing changes with two losses,” said defenseman Maxwell Seeber ‘22. “We focused in on understanding the game plan for the team we have in front of us and made sure went full speed in practice and kept that energy and intensity high.”

He looks at these losses as just a bump in the road and knows that this small slump will only help the team and the players grow individually.

“Being that the centennial conference is one of the toughest conferences in the country for DIII lacrosse we know that we have to up our intensity, focus, and preparation to get that momentum going again. This is a time for us to speed up and go to a high level of play and not stay stagnant,” Seeber continued.  

Seeber is confident that they will bounce back from the pair of losses. “After a strong start to our conference play with a big win over Haverford, we feel that in order to get over the hump and consistently win our tough conference games, we need to learn to win the close one goal games.”

With the last two losses being by one goal, the team looks to work on finishing games off strong. As for the rest of the season, the Mules look to move forward to playing the next two games on the road, playing in the roughest DIII conference against a team who is 7-3, eager to rid themselves of their three game losing skid.

“It is going to take a full 60 minutes of playing simple but gritty lacrosse to beat the tough teams. It takes a lot of hard work in the offseason and season to come on top in the toughest conference in the nation. We have to work hard in every practice so that hard work leads to success when we play eight tough in-conference teams,” Grossman said.

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