By the midpoint of the regular season, Princeton women’s lacrosse already had built an impressive résumé, with a 7–1 record that included wins over No. 9 Loyola and No. 11 Penn State. Head coach Chris Sailer and her team — an Ivy League co-champion and at-large choice for the NCAA Tournament in 2014 — set their sights on winning the Ivy’s automatic bid this year.
“Recent history has proven that to win the Ivies you have to beat Penn,” Sailer said. “But that game doesn’t even matter unless you do well in your other Ivy games, so we really do take a one-game-at-a-time focus. In our minds, we have seven Ivy League championship games to play, each one as important as the others.”
The Tigers, ranked No. 11 in the Division I coaches’ poll, won their first two Ivy games decisively. The second, a 17–12 win over Harvard March 21, was the 350th victory in Sailer’s Hall of Fame career.
Princeton’s attack is versatile and unpredictable, with goals coming from different angles and different players, including Olivia Hompe ’17 (23 goals), Erin Slifer ’15 (20), and Stephanie Paloscio ’16 (11). Goalie Ellie DeGarmo ’17 has a .500 save percentage, the eighth highest in the country.