The No. 4
Florida lacrosse team won its eighth-straight game this afternoon, taking down
No. 10 Penn State, 20-11, to remain perfect in American Lacrosse Conference
play since the start of 2011. With the win, the Gators improve to 12-2 (2-0
ALC), while the Nittany Lions drop to 8-3 (1-1 ALC).
Both teams
wore pink during warm-ups to help recognize Cancer Awareness Day, as today’s
game was Florida’s “Beat Cancer with a Stick” game, coordinated by the National
Foundation for Cancer Research. The game was put together
to promote health education in the community while raising funds to help
eradicate cancer.
“I think it
is incredibly important (to recognize such an important cause),” said Head
Coach Amanda O’Leary. “Anytime we can
bring something onto the national spotlight, I think it is tremendous. Today it
was nice to see Penn State out in their pink. We are really appreciative of them coming down and
supporting cancer awareness. Also,
we have some players where it hits close to home and I thought it was a great
tribute and one that I am really proud to be a part of.”
With today’s win, O’Leary became
just the 12th coach in NCAA history to capture 200 Division I women’s lacrosse
victories, doing so in just 279 games over the past 17 seasons, sitting among
the best of the best with a .717 career winning percentage.
“It felt
really good,” said today’s leading scorer Shannon Gilroy (Huntington, N.Y.). “She’s a great coach and she
just enjoys lacrosse and us. It’s great to win it for her.”
“You credit
the student-athletes,” O’Leary said. “You credit these young women who work so
hard day in and day out. These
victories aren’t self-earned; we have a great support staff with Karin Werth
and Anna Hale as our trainer and Caleb (Sorgius) as our academic advisor. This is a total team win. You don’t get
those as head coaches without tremendous assistant coaches and I really feel
blessed. The University of Florida
provides all of these opportunities to earn 200 wins, so I have to credit
everyone else. It is a great opportunity.”
