The Rowan women’s lacrosse team was ranked seventh in the East Region in the second NCAA Regional Rankings.

This comes as no surprise for head coach Lindsay Delaney.

“I think we should have been anywhere between five and seven,” Delaney said. “I’m not surprised that we’re in the rankings. I think our wins are quality wins and our losses are quality losses. We don’t have any what you would consider bad losses.”

The other colleges that ranked ahead of the Profs, starting from first place, were St. John Fisher College, William Smith College, The College of New Jersey, Ithaca College, SUNY Geneseo and SUNY Cortland. The team behind Rowan in eighth place is The College at Brockport.

“Obviously we’re definitely happy about it,” said junior defender Kaitlyn Schneider. “I think we can improve and get higher up in the rankings. We’re all really proud.”

Schneider went on to say they have been working hard all season and they’re not done yet.

Delaney looks to the ranking to set the bar for her squad for the future.

“I think it’s saying this is where you should be and you gotta fight to stay there,” Delaney said. “Whether or not we get the Pool C, it [sets expectations] for the next year going forward and our underclassmen are seeing that this is what our expectation is. We are expected to be ranked from four through seven now for first rankings and we wanna stay in the rankings. You wanna stay in people’s conversation, right? That’s what the whole point is.”  

Schneider thinks the news has been positive for team morale.

“It always feels good to see that you’re being recognized for your good work,” Schneider said. “It just shows that we can keep going pushing it to the limit.”

But there’s still work to be done.

“Each game carries weight but I think that our whole team mentality right now is taking it a game at a time,” Schneider said. “Especially with the NJAC tournament coming up. But right now we’re just playing to keep playing.”

The team has really stepped up their game in order to achieve this ranking. They had a combined total of 246 goals this season with only 173 goals by their opponents allowed. This followed them into the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC), with the Profs currently having 92 goals by period to their opponents’ 53.

These stats helped to bring Rowan to a 10-6 record for the regular season and a 5-1 record for the NJAC.

The second place Profs will see third place Montclair State University at home in the first round of the NJAC Tournament on Wednesday May 1 at 7:00 p.m.. They last met on Saturday April 20 when Rowan came home with a come-from-behind 9-8 win in overtime.

Regardless of how the Profs do, Coach Delaney says that their ultimate goal stays the same.

“Be better at the end of the day than at the beginning,” Delaney said.

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