Junior Katie Mackay guards a Monmouth player during Fairifield's 20-12 season opening win. (Dan Leitao/The Mirror)
For the past three seasons, junior midfielder Kristen Coleman, a first-team All-Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) player a season ago, has used her skills to set herself apart.
Now, with the added pressure of her standing as the women’s lacrosse team’s top scoring option, and her newfound position atop the list of the program’s all-time leading goal scorer, Coleman finds herself in the midst even more praise not for her points but by her presence.
“(Kristen) is starting to get the better defenders, and that’s why (senior Erin) Rigby and some other players have success because now you don’t have that top defender,” head coach Mike Waldvogel said of Coleman.
“She just has to keep playing within our game, and so far she’s doing a good job,” he added.
That good job was evident in the team’s convincing win over Monmouth, 20-12, this past Saturday in the team’s home opener at Alumni Field. Coleman tallied four goals on the afternoon, which allowed her to become the Stags’ all-time leader in goals.
“We were a little flat going into it,” Waldvogel said of the victory. “We actually had a number of shots that we wanted but they weren’t good shots in the sense of positioning and hitting the goalie. I think it was more nerves in the first half, and then we started running-and-gunning and pulled away from them pretty easy.”
Despite the early jitters, an even more promising sign for Fairfield’s prospects to repeat as MAAC Champions this season was the strong offensive showing for the rest of Coleman’s supporting cast in Waldvogel’s frenetic, run-and-gun offense. Senior attack Erin Rigby led the team with seven goals, junior midfielder Brittney Bare tallied three, and two other Stags added two goals in the rout.
Even with a strong showing, Waldvogel still feels that the team is destined for even better things once the myriad of the team’s first-year starters settle into their brand new roles.
“We have six new players, (including a) new goalie and a new defender,” Waldvogel said. “We have four new offensive players. (Senior) Kate (Reardon) and (junior Katie) Mackay were the two people that played a lot last year. They were kind of the next people to go in last year and now they have full-time starting positions. We have a couple of positions that were new, a couple of freshman, and there were some nerves there,” Waldvogel added.
Even with a relatively green offense, the Stags still feel that they remain a prominent contender to win the conference again this season and that the learning curve will be slim to none.
“I think this year with five of us as seniors and Cait (Young), a grad student, most of us have played before,” said Reardon. “It is definitely going to be hard to replace the class above us. I think we’re going to be able to do the job. I think there is more pressure on a senior, having to step up and fill what last year’s class did.
“But with the six of us I think that we all are really good position to do what we can do,” she added.
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