Jan. 19, 2011
NASHVILLE — The Vanderbilt women’s lacrosse team kicked off the 2011 preseason with its first practice of the new year Wednesday on campus.
The Commodores have three weeks to prepare for their first action of the year before traveling to the South of the Border preseason tournament in North Carolina on February 6. Vanderbilt opens the regular season on Saturday, Feb. 12, at Presbyterian College. That trip will be followed by a four-game homestand that features matchups against North Carolina (Feb. 16), Canisius (Feb. 22), Northwestern (Feb. 27) and Cincinnati (March 2).
As the team opened practice Wednesday, Head Coach Cathy Swezey spoke about the year ahead. A transcript is below.
On the excitement of the first day of practice….
“It’s great to be out here. Our girls are really excited to be back on the field. Nothing fires up a team more than naysayers, and I think a lot of people are thinking that about us — that we’re going to have a rebuilding year after graduating the class that we did. But these girls are fired up and they’re ready to show everybody that we have something here.
On four straight trips to the NCAA Tournament, but no tournament wins….
“I think that’s the key. We feel like we’ve been consistent and successful, but we still think we have a monkey our back because we keep losing in the first round. We really want to advance. We have in-season goals, as well, that we’re excited about it.”
On the focus of early practices….
“Because we’re opening up so quickly this year we are actually going to get to game play pretty quickly. We did graduate a lot on offense, so our focus may be a little bit offensively oriented. We’ll get a lot of game play in and just get them going as quickly as we can.”
On returning two seniors on defense (Claire Leonard and Catherine Mitchell) and a two-year starter in goalkeeper Natalie Wills….
“It’s great. And the really nice thing is that our youth that has stepped in for Alex [Mundy] and Laura [Keenan] has really stepped up. They’re phenomenal athletes and we haven’t really seen a drop off on the defense, which is pretty exciting.”