The UW-Eau Claire women’s lacrosse team traveled to Menominee on Saturday to play the UW-Stout Blue Devils in a conference tilt. The Blugolds posted 21 goals for the afternoon en route to a 21-7 victory. 

Saturday also marked a historic day for third-year Alexie Romanelli, as she scored her 100th career goal, becoming the first player in Blugold history to score 100 goals. 

The game started quickly for the Blugolds as third-year Samantha Burns opened the scoring two minutes into the game with Romanelli and second-year Peyton Gullickson tallying goals for the Blugolds in the first quarter. 

The Blue Devils kept it close in the first quarter, tallying two goals of their own in the opening frame but the Blugolds offense in the second quarter erupted for ten goals in the next frame, including seven unanswered goals in five minutes. 

For head coach Michael Rhodovi, it came down to making adjustments and sticking to their identity as a team to get the ten-goal rally started. 

“We have a good identity of who we are and we just keep falling back on that,” Rhodovi said. “We recognize when we are playing our game or our opponent’s game and just have to rally it back together, grind it out and play our game.” 

Romanelli and Burns led the charge for the Blugolds during this hot stretch in the game with Romanelli scoring two goals within 17 seconds of each other and Burns scoring three goals within a minute, with assists on those three goals coming from second-year Lily Zygowicz. 

The Blugolds didn’t look back from the ten-goal second quarter as they notched six goals in the third quarter en route to their second conference win on the season and their eighth win away from Simpson Field. 

More program records were set by the team on Saturday afternoon, as the offense fired 45 shots on goal which is tied for the fourth most in program history. 

Despite the offensive performance of the team on Saturday, the defense also lived up to its billing by forcing 24 turnovers, and the chances that the Blue Devils got off were nullified by third-year goalie Alexandria Shea, who had eight saves for the afternoon.

The defensive play of the Blugolds helped generate offense in turn by applying pressure all afternoon. For Shea, she’s been pleased with the defensive effort of the team and the way the team has communicated with each other to go after loose balls and apply pressure on opponents. 

“Defense has been great this season,” Shea said. “They just know what to do in applying pressure and a lot of it is just calling out where the ball is and they’re just so great in knowing what to do out there.”

The Blugolds are starting to round into form coming down the home stretch of the season as they get closer to the WIAC conference tournament in a few weeks. 

For Shea, the team has shown a lot of growth and maturity since the beginning of the season and the upperclassmen on the team have played a big role in helping the first-year players develop as the season has progressed. 

“We have a pretty big freshman class so a lot of the growth has come from integrating them as part of the team,” Shea said. “We’ve worked on communication on and off the field to help mesh everyone together.”

While Saturday’s victory in the I-94 rivalry had a lot of strong points for the Blugolds to take away and apply going forward, Rhodovi says that the team still has some things to improve upon going forward. 

“We can always improve,” Rhodovi said. “Especially on ground balls and just the form of it. We get them but we do a lot of popping the ball up since we aren’t moving our feet so we can work on that.”

The Blugolds will look to grow the two-game win streak they have right now as they play the UW-La Crosse Eagles at 7 p.m. on April 24 in La Crosse. 

Mikalofsky can be reached at [email protected].