Gauchos to Face St. Mary's
Santa Barbara, CA - UCSB women's lacrosse heads north this weekend to take on NCAA Division I St. Mary's College in a 1:00pm scrimmage. It is the Gauchos first time playing an NCAA Division I opponent in recent history. The Gaels are members of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) with UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Denver, Oregon and Stanford. Nineteen Gauchos hail from Northern California so the scrimmage is a chance to play close to home. In the 90's UCSB played spring home games against NCAA teams Boston College, Pennsylvania, Rutgers and William & Mary while also facing Georgetown, Maryland, Northwestern and William & Mary on the road. The Gauchos were 0-8 in those meetings but toward the end of the string of games over a two year span figured out how to play at the higher level. UCSB made a run at Georgetown before dropping an 8-7 decision and then almost pulled out a 6-5 contest vs. Northwestern in a game played at William & Mary. "This trip to St. Mary's is a chance for us to play someone different," says head coach Paul Ramsey. "To get better we have to play better teams and this is one we could get to play us." UCSB is going to first measure success at this contest by whether it stays aggressive in the face of what could be considered an imposing opponent. "We really want to look at this in two ways," says Ramsey. "The first is it's a chance to play lacrosse and it doesn't matter if it's a fall scrimmage or the national championship. We're just excited to get to play lacrosse." "The second way we need to approach this is finding a way to channel any nervousness into nervous energy we use to our advantage." The worst loss for UCSB during the previous series of games against NCAA DI teams was a 14-2 loss at #1 Maryland played in freezing rain on the turf in College Park. Three days after hosting UCSB the Terps went to #15 James Madison and beat them 15-3. Maryland went on to win the NCAA national championship that year. Comments Ramsey. "We were lucky to have scored two goals against that team. We definitely weren't used to losing like that and it stung but it made us better because by the time that trip was over and we returned to WWLL competition we had picked up our game. We had been in the 'Lions Den' so to speak." UCSB head coach Paul Ramsey and St. Mary's head coach Lauren Uhr are friends. Uhr, a standout midfielder at Fairfield University, has played for numerous teams Ramsey puts together for tournaments. Most recently she played for Ramsey's East West team in the Vail Lacrosse Shootout and for USA California at the International Friendship Games in Japan.
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