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UCSB To Face Claremont in Exhibition Game on Saturday

Jan. 26, 2011

Santa Barbara, CA - UCSB will open up with a short one game exhibition season hosting NCAA DIII Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges on Saturday. The game is set for 2:30pm on the UCSB turf. It is the only exhibition game for both teams before they start the regular season. The Gauchos are coming off a 14-5 season that ended in the national quarterfinals of the U.S. Lacrosse WDIA Tournament. The Athenas were 16-3 in 2010 going two rounds into the NCAA DIII Tournament.

UCSB returns 13 players and 7 of them were starters in 2010. The Gauchos have added 5 new players to their 'A' Team to settle in on an 18 player roster. Four of the newcomers are freshmen and the fifth is a transfer from SBCC. Another 19 players are on the UCSB 'B' Team making the program 37 players strong.

Click Here For the Complete 2011 Roster

Claremont returns 17 players from last season, including leading scorer Sarah Dick (Beverly, MA / St. George's School) who had 67 goals and 19 assists playing attack. The Gauchos lost leading scorer Maggie Aker (52 goals, 15 assists) to graduation but seem to offset any Claremont Sarah Dick advantage by returning their next three leading scorers who combined for 107 goals and 40 assists in 2010.

Click here to see the UCSB stats from 2010

UCSB has experienced success the past three years in their exhibition contests with three consecutive two goal wins over the Athenas.  This one looks to be the best test of all played so far.

"It's been three close games with Claremont in the last three outings," said 4th year UCSB head coach Paul Ramsey.

Now here comes Claremont with more experience than in the past and likely aiming for a little payback. The Athenas no doubt would like to reverse the results of the past and their seniors have been on the short end of all three of the past match-ups.

"It's certainly nice to be at home for this one to have a little bit of a comfort zone mentally heading into it," commented Ramsey about the upcoming contest, "but we have to take care of business."

"Being at home isn't going to automatically get us more ground balls and finish our chances for us so we will need to do that ourselves."

The Gauchos are ranked 6th in the WCLA National Pre-Season Poll. US Lacrosse renamed their intercollegiate associates division this year from WDIA to WCLA, short for Women's Collegiate Lacrosse Associates.