Gormley Scores 100th Point in Senior Night Win Over Tampa

Mary Gormley - Photo credit: James Ragan Photography

The Florida Tech Women’s lacrosse team celebrated Senior Night in grand fashion Saturday, with a 19-3 victory over Tampa in a Sunshine State Conference contest. The Panthers were able to get everybody in the game, clearing the bench in the second half.

“This was obviously a conference game we wanted to win,” said Florida Tech coach Corinne Desrosiers. Point differential doesn’t really matter, we wanted to win and we wanted to make sure everyone got looks.”

It was the final home game for Allie Modica, who finished with a hat trick. She was joined by fellow seniors Arielle Gunderson and Jesse DePaolo, who were honored prior to the game.

Coach Desrosiers said that Modica would probably end up being a Hall of Famer for the program. “She’s done great thing for us,” she said. “We’re really fortunate that she transferred from UConn and came down and played.”

“Arielle came in at the right time too,” Desrosiers continued. “We run a very high pressure backer zone and she’s an athlete. You don’t need a great lacrosse player as a backer, you need a good athlete and she’s a monster.”

Desrosiers said that DePaolo brought a lot of experience. “I got to coach her at the club scene in Massachusetts in high school. She’s a great teammate and she’s a really good edition for these girls to have some experience and maturity on that backline.”   

Sara Grenier led the Panthers with five goals, Caroline Dunleavy had four and Mary Gormley had a goal and three assists. Her goal came with 28.5 seconds left and it was a significant one, because it gave her 100 points for her career.

Florida Tech ambushed Tampa goalie Mackenzie Hackett in the first half, scoring eight straight goals. Caroline Dunleavy got the Panthers on the board 4:43 in and Sara Grenier followed with her first of the night.

Two goals by Leah Dunn were sandwiched between a Sam Schiano goal and with 9:05 left in the first half, it was 5-0. Dunleavy scored back-to-back goals 2:02 apart and she had her hat trick with 5:42 to go.

Sara Grenier - Photo credit: James Ragan

Panthers goalie Stephanie Stuart was on her game early. She made four saves in the first half, including one after the Schiano goal and another, with 11:45 left in the half that she stopped point blank. It was a low shot and she got her stick down on it and smothered it, keeping the Spartans off the board.

Grenier scored her second of the half, with 5:00 left and it was 8-0. Tampa finally got on the board 23 seconds later, with a goal from Amanda Voges. Schiano and Grenier tallied 15 seconds apart, to give the Panthers a 10-1 advantage.

Maggie Gladden got Tampa back on the goal column with 37.6 seconds left, but Dunleavy scored her fourth goal of the half, with 9.7 seconds showing on the clock and sent the Panthers to the locker room with an 11-2 advantage.

The Panthers took 24 shots in the first half, 18 of them were on goal. They took advantage of 16 Tampa turnovers, while only turning it over six times themselves. Florida Tech held a 23-10 advantage in ground balls after 30 minutes and were a perfect 11-for-11 on clears.

In the second half, with the sizeable lead, coach Desrosiers decided to give freshman goalie Chloe Zador the net, giving Stuart a chance to rest.

“What we wanted to accomplish, especially in the second half, was to make sure we could rotate enough of our players through the lineup,” said Desrosiers. “We needed to see where our strengths were and see these kids on film, so we got to play everybody today, it was a big team effort.”

Modica scored the first goal of the second half, putting the Panthers up 12-2, but Tampa answered with a three-goal run, including the second of the night for Voges making it 12-5. Grenier scored back-to-back goals about a minute and a half apart, giving the Panthers a 14-5 advantage.

Claire Swanson scored with 19:00 minutes to go for Tampa, but Modica scored two in a row, the last of those coming with 11:53 left and giving Florida Tech a 16-6 lead. Gormley assisted on both of those tallies and was sitting at 99 career points.

Allie Modica - Photo credit: James Ragan

Goals from Amanda Rom and Caroline Forester cut the Panthers lead in half, 16-8. After Aleah Fjelstad got one back for the home team with 8:55 to go, Tampa went on a five-goal run, three of those were scored by Forester and with 2:19 left, the Panthers lead was 17-13.

“I think you saw Tampa take advantage of the fact that we had some less experienced players out there, Desrosiers said. “I still think we held our own, we got to put our backup goalie in and she’s gonna have a lot to work on from this. Sometimes when you get it handed to you a bit, you get so much better from it."

Leah Dunn scored her third goal of the night, with 41.3 seconds to go, to give the Panthers an 18-13 lead and that led to Gormley’s milestone goal, putting the icing on the cake for Florida Tech.

For more info: Tampa @ Florida Tech Box Score

With the win, the Panthers improved to 11-2 on the season and 2-1 in the SSC. The 11 wins is a school record for the program.

“Our leadership is really great this year,” said Desrosiers. I gotta hand it to our captains, they’ve really managed the emotions of our team and it served us well. They’re playing consistent and that’s all I can ask for. 11-2, that’s pretty good.”

The Panthers will end the regular season on Thursday, at Rollins in a 7:00 p.m. game. The Tars were 11-3, going into Sunday’s game against Lenoire-Rhyne. That is a non-conference contest, so the teams will go into Thursday’s showdown with identical 2-1 conference records.

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