W. Lax hopes to put up good 'fight' against Irish

If the Penn women's lacrosse team is going to avoid an 0-7 start, it will need to shut down Notre Dame's potent offense. The Penn women's lacrosse season is becoming a race against history. Tonight at Franklin Field, the Quakers will have one shot to lunge for the tape and avoid entering the wrong side of the annals of Penn athletics. It could be tough for the Quakers (0-6) to avoid becoming the first women's lacrosse squad at Penn ever to open a season with seven straight losses. Notre Dame (4-2) -- which visits Penn tonight at 7 p.m. -- has won its last two games in convincing fashion, beating Connecticut 18-6 on March 28 and knocking off Villanova 15-9 on Saturday. The Fighting Irish are not only hot, they seriously outgun Penn. The top two scorers for Notre Dame, Lael O'Shaughnessy (26 goals) and Courtney Calabrese (17), have combined for 43 goals in six games this year. The Quakers have only tallied a total of 37 goals and they will be without leading scorer Brooke Jenkins (12 goals), who tore her right ACL last week and will likely miss the remainder of the season. "We're going to have to have hard work on defense," said Penn assistant coach Alanna Wren, who has been leading the team since the players petitioned for the removal of head coach Anne Sage before the season. "Notre Dame has a girl that averages five or six goals a game and we've basically got to approach that and control it at the defensive end." It has now been one month since Sage left the team but the Athletic Department has still not made an official decision regarding her future. To avoid tying the 1992 team with a record seventh straight loss tonight, the Quakers will need to contain more than just O'Shaughnessy and Calabrese. Notre Dame's Kerry Callahan (14 goals) and Kathryn Perella (11 goals) are also scoring threats. One way to control the Irish's weapons will be for the Quakers to keep the ball themselves and get it up to the attack with good midfield transition. Thursday, in a 15-1 loss at Temple, Penn had its best performance of the season in that department. "The midfield transition improved a lot [at Temple]," senior co-captain Jen Leisman said. "We need to try to bring everything together." Bringing everything together will also include the attack, which will not have its leader, Jenkins. Her absence leaves Amy Weinstein as the leading goal scorer for the Quakers with six, followed by Leisman and freshman Traci Marabella with four apiece. "The attack is controlling the ball [better than at the beginning of the season]," Marabella said. "But no one has had the confidence to go to the net. We just have to not be afraid to miss. We need to not get into that." If Penn's overall performance level continues to rise tonight, the Quakers will have a good chance at their first win of the season tonight. With winnable games on the road later this week at Columbia and Harvard, a win tonight could be just the boost that Penn needs. Another important thing for the Quakers to do is to come out strong. In four of this season's six losses, Penn has fallen behind by five or more goals to start the game. "It's not going to be easy," Wren said. "[We cannot] get into a hole early and try to dig ourselves out. [This] is going to be a huge game for us and it could be a real turning point if we can win it." The Quakers hope to turn their season around tonight. Having gone through so much difficulty already, the team will have every right to be satisfied with a strong finish. "We had a lot of adversity at the beginning," Leisman said. "It's frustrating and we just have to try our hardest. Hopefully we can all eventually feel good about it."