A historical game for the Blue Devils. For the first time in Blue Devil history, the girls lacrosse program played a commemoration game for Morgan’s Message. Morgan Rodgers was a lacrosse player for the Duke women’s lacrosse program. In January of 2017, Rodgers sustained a career ending injury to her knee. Rodgers, enduring many surgeries and rehabilitation programs, began to question her self-worth and if she was going to return to the field. Suffering from depression, stress and anxiety, Rodgers took her own life on July 11 of 2019. On May 16, 2024 the Blue Devil lacrosse program played to commemorate Rodgers.
This game was played to help remind “any other athlete out there, you’re more than an athlete and we just thought this was really important to really let athletes know that they have a huge support system,” said head coach Katie DaSilva.
Westfield took a 16-8 win over Montclair. Although Montclair had taken an early lead within the first few minutes of the first quarter, the Blue Devils quickly responded, going on a 5-0 run to close out the quarter. Each goal in the first quarter was scored by a different player, demonstrating the team’s well-roundedness and all around ability.
In the second quarter, the devils extended their lead to a six goal margin. However, Montclair responded with two more goals. With sophomores Gilli Cohen and Alice Manzo and junior Abi Mokrzycki leading the way, each scoring two a piece between the first and second quarter, Westfield went into halftime with a comfortable 9-3 lead.
To follow, in the third quarter, both Cohen and Manzo scored another goal to give themselves each a hat trick for the game. Seniors Juliana Molinelli and captain Lucy Mineo scored their second goals of the game, and another goal from Manzo brought the Blue Devils their fifth goal of the quarter. Nevertheless, Montclair doubled their score, and the game went into the fourth quarter 14-6.
In the final quarter, Manzo scored her fifth goal of the game, and sophomore Maeve Wojcik scored as well. Montclair scored two more, but it was not nearly enough to put themselves back into the game.
The Blue Devils, in their best home performance of the season, improving their home game record to 3-6, defeated highly-ranked Montclair by double their score.
“We were 2-6 at home,” said DaSilva. “We just get nervous with pressure at home and I think we realized just play, just have fun. Everybody had fun today, lots of laughs were had and a lot of different people were doing really good things today.”
Although the results did not display it, Montclair is an extremely competitive team in the conference. Molinelli said, “I think we were pretty even. This team was definitely even with us.”
Senior Sara Rooney added, “[Montclair] ended our season last year so we were out for blood. We want to get our revenge and we did and we’re probably going to see them next week. We want to get double revenge.”
The Blue Devils will face Randolph away at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday. This game is the last one before Westfield plays their first game in the state tournament next week.
