The Oregon women’s lacrosse team came back from a four-point deficit at halftime to edge UC Davis, 10-9, in Davis, California, and end a three-game losing streak.
UC Davis got off to a strong start scoring four straight goals. Oregon finally got on the board with a goal from junior attacker Mariah Gatti with 18:17 left in the first period. The Ducks’ sophomore attacker Shannon Williams and junior defender Jill Zubillaga each scored one more goal each to narrow Oregon’s deficit to one.
That was the closest Oregon came to catching the Aggies during the first half as UC Davis went on to score five more goals to Oregon’s two to finish out the half.
At halftime, the Aggies led 9-5.
The Ducks came out unstoppable during the second half and scored five unanswered goals to take the lead for the first time all game with just over six minutes remaining. The Ducks weathered everything the Aggies threw at them over the final couple minutes and ultimately came away with the win, 10-9.
The Ducks finished out the day with 22 shots on goal, compared to 15 from UC Davis, and 14 draw controls to the Aggie’s seven.
With just under eight minutes remaining in the first half, Oregon’s Maddie Clark was substituted in goal for starter Becca Katzen. Clark recorded one goal against and four saves to help propel the Ducks to the second half comeback.
Bella Pyne led Oregon in goals with three, while Cambi Cukar led the team in assists with three.
Cukar has recorded 33 assists on the season and 115 in her career. That moves her into the No. 1 spot on Oregon’s all-time career assists leaderboard, passing Shannon Propst’s 114 assists record from 2011-14.
The Ducks’ win improves their record to 8-7 (4-3 MPSF) and clinches a spot in the MPSF Tournament. Before the tournament beings, the Ducks finish out regular season play at home against Saint Mary’s on Sunday.
Despite leading 10-5 at halftime, the Oregon women’s lacrosse team was unable to stop Stanford’s second-half comeback as the Cardinal went on to win 17-13 in Stanford, California.
Stanford started off scoring with a 2-0 run to lead the Ducks with 24 minutes remaining in the half. The Ducks came back scoring four straight to overtake the Cardinal by two. Those goals were scored by Bella Pyne (2), Julia Taylor and Jill Zubillaga.
After two more goals from Stanford, as well as a goal from Oregon’s Mariah Gatti, the score was tied at five with less than eight minutes remaining in the first period.
From there, the Ducks took charge and went on a 5-0 run to finish out the first half leading 10-5. Gatti scored twice to secure herself a hat trick, as well as another one for Zubillaga, and the first of the day for Shannon Williams and Cambi Cukar.
The Cardinal got things rolling right out of the gate to start the second half, scoring just 20 seconds in. Stanford scored three more before Oregon was able to get on the board again. Gatti scored her fourth goal of the day with less than 25 minutes remaining.
Stanford tied the game up at 11 before Zubillaga scored her third goal to garner a hat trick and take back the lead.
The Cardinal then went on a 5-0 run to lead the Ducks 16-12 with 8:27 remaining in the game. Pyne scored her third goal of the game to become the third Duck with a hat trick, but it was not enough to bring the Ducks back from its second half slump.
Friday’s loss brings Oregon’s record to 7-7 (3-3 MPSF).
Oregon had 32 shots while Stanford had 31.
Cukar, Oregon’s leader in assists, added one more assist to bring her career total to 112. She now needs just three more to break the all-time Oregon career assists record.
The Ducks will remain in California to play UC Davis on Sunday.
The University of Oregon club men’s lacrosse team has continually found ways to stand above the 41 other club teams at UO. Not only is it one of the top club teams in the country, but it practices at the Moshofsky Center, Oregon football’s indoor athletic facility; has three social media and multimedia interns; boasts a strong alumni base and fan following; and even garnered an apparel deal with Nike.
Head coach Markus McCaine has played an integral role in making this happen. He always admired Oregon lacrosse, which was a powerhouse program when he was an undergraduate playing for the University at Buffalo in New York. He won a national championship with Colorado and was the head coached at Alabama before coming to Oregon.
Now a master’s student in Oregon’s renowned Warsaw Sports Marketing program, McCaine is translating his marketing skills into big perks for his team.
“The ultimate goal is to build something, in terms of club, that is kind of above being a club and one step behind being varsity,” McCaine said.
The team does not get all of the same benefits as Division I athletes at Oregon, but the agreement McCaine negotiated with Nike includes $5,000 of gear, 40 percent off retail pricing for apparel purchases and 35 percent off retail pricing for footwear purchases. The team also receives buy-two-get-one-free custom Vapor Elite gloves and buy-three-get-one-free on other athletic accessories like padding and backpacks. The team’s only responsibility is to be a “brand ambassador” by promoting the Nike brand on social media and wearing 100 percent Nike uniforms.
Oregon Head Coach Markus McCaine speaks to the team during practice. The Oregon Men’s Club Lacrosse team holds practice at the turf fields outside of The Rec on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, Ore. on Tuesday, April 11, 2017. (Adam Eberhardt/Emerald)
“I don’t think Uncle Phil could have a contract with anyone else at this level,” senior captain Justin Knowles said. “It’s a way to legitimize our program.”
McCaine has also negotiated informal sponsorships for the team with GoPro and Muscle Milk. Part of the reason these agreements came to fruition was the team’s impressive social media following. The team has nearly 12,000 Instagram followers, almost 3,000 followers on Twitter and over 2,000 likes on Facebook. One of the team’s videos on Instagram reached over 52,000 views.
Three volunteer interns the club hires each year are in charge of producing written content, taking video, photos and running all of the social media platforms. McCaine started recruiting these interns to build the program’s brand when he first joined the program in fall 2015.
“Markus came in with a fresh mindset,” Dustin Valdez, one of the interns, said. “Obviously being a business student, knowing that there’s more out there, knowing that lacrosse is a rising sport and people want a piece of that. Especially with Nike being right up the road. They do have a lacrosse line, but it’s kind of untapped — it hasn’t gotten big.”
McCaine even created a “brand guide” including what hashtags the interns should use, how the posts should look and the quality of photography that should be posted.
“We built out that brand, what it would look like, what it would sound like and what it would be,” McCaine said. “Then we just translated that into social media and that’s when it just blew up. Once we got some interns, we were really consistent with who we were and what we’re about, and it took off.”
Junior long stick midfielder Troy Romstad sees the opportunity McCaine has to coach an elite club team and develop his sports marketing skills at the same time as a “win-win.”
“He’s building his sports marketing resume by doing all of this stuff for the lacrosse program, but for guys like me who are just on the team, I get so much new, cool stuff that we didn’t get before,” Romstad said.
Apart from the product deals, the lacrosse team has found a way to utilize some of Oregon’s top facilities and trainers through a class called sports conditioning, which club athletes can take after completing the weightlifting prerequisites. The athletes are able to work out with strength and conditioning coachMark Davis, who also works with varsity women’s basketball and volleyball. Every Tuesday and Thursday, the athletes are put through an hour and a half workout in the Moshofsky and Casanova Centers.
“We’ve developed a strong relationship with Coach Davis and it’s honestly the most fun I have as an athlete,” Knowles said. “You get amazing facilities, you have a coach who knows what he’s doing and that’s a lot of fun. It’s a really healthy environment to get stronger and get better as an athlete.”
Oregon Head Coach Markus McCaine watches as players participate in a drill. The Oregon Men’s Club Lacrosse team holds practice at the turf fields outside of The Rec on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, Ore. on Tuesday, April 11, 2017. (Adam Eberhardt/Emerald)
McCaine has created a program that is as close to Division I as it gets. But because of Title IX regulations, if Oregon created a varsity men’s lacrosse program, the school would either have to get rid of one, or even two, men’s teams or add a women’s athletic team to make up for the extra 50 varsity male athletes.
Title IX mandates that UO offer an equal opportunity for men and women to participate in NCAA athletics.
“We kind of float in the space between a club sport and a Division I sport,” Valdez said. “The only thing that is holding us back from being a Division I sport is funding and Title IX.”
Despite creating a distinguished club lacrosse program, McCaine says that there is still much to be done. He wants to up the men’s athletic apparel even further, wants to have “more alignment” with the women’s club lacrosse program and even hopes to play on Pape Field someday. For now, he continues to “run as close to an NCAA program” as he can.
Week two of Oregon football spring practice began on Monday and there is one thing that both coaches and players can agree on: They are happy that athletes like Royce Freeman and Darren Carrington, who were on the edge of declaring for the NFL, are back and ready to get the team on track.
Carrington tallied five touchdowns and 606 receiving yards during the 2016 season. Another significant player who decided to forego the draft is senior offensive lineman Tyrell Crosby. He was out for the majority of the 2016 campaign due to a foot injury. Freeman also had an injury that held him back in some games, but he still led the team in touchdowns with nine and rushed for 945 yards.
“I’d prepared myself for him leaving,” quarterback Justin Herbert said. “I know he’s such a special player and an opportunity like that doesn’t come often. I was ready for him to leave, but when he came back it was super exciting. He’s one of the best running backs I’ve ever seen and I’m excited to have him back.”
Freeman said the decision to stay is “never easy.”
“I felt like it was a win-win,” Freeman said. “I feel blessed to even have that decision put in front of me. Taking the good with the bad. We have a great team here and we just have to work from here on out. … We have a lot of guys returning, a lot of guys that decided to come back to get another year with the team. From here on out, the work ethic is only going to prove what outcome it is.”
The specifics as to why he decided to stay, however, are “top secret.”
“Can’t tell you that,” he said.
Head coach Willie Taggart said that he doesn’t want to try and reinvent things with Freeman. He does want to make sure that Freeman understands the blocking schemes and is more physical when he runs the ball, but apart from that, he is confident in Royce’s abilities and is excited to see what he can do.
“We’re going to let Royce be Royce and play ball,” Taggart said. “Royce is a pretty good football player and you don’t have to change much.”
Taggart has often emphasized leadership. As spring practice progresses, those leadership roles will be filled.
“Definitely Tyrell Crosby, Royce are the leader-type guys,” Herbert said. “They’re doing a good job of leading the group, and I’m going to do my best to get guys motivated and we just gotta keep picking it up.
These returning veterans are many of the players Taggart hopes will be the ones to take on the strong leadership roles.
“You see a lot more leading by example right now more than anything,” Taggart said. “As we continue to go and grow, the leadership that we want will come.”
Jesse Shofner dominated each one of her four years on Fugue, Oregon women’s ultimate frisbee team.
In addition to being Fugue’s team captain for two years, she led the team to national championships in 2013 and 2015, won the 2016 Ultiworld college player of the year and was a member of the All-Star Ultimate Tour in 2015 and 2016. Her recruiting video from 2016 has nearly 50,000 views on YouTube.
Those are just a few of Shofner’s many accolades. So it comes to no surprise that she’s having unprecedented success professionally.
Shofner, who graduated from the University of Oregon in the spring of 2016, was recently selected to the 28-person roster for the Nashville Nightwatch, making her the first female player in history to make a full-season American Ultimate Disk League (AUDL) roster.
Shofner tried out and attended training camps with the Nightwatch, a semi-pro team, for a few months before finally being offered a spot on the team.
“As a female playing in a predominately male environment, I was curious just if I could do it. If I could hold my own,” Shofner said.
During her first game against the Jacksonville Cannons, Shofner settled right in, scoring two points and helping her team play a hard-fought match.
“The body of work over the course of three months that she showed left every single one of the coaches with full confidence in her to make the right decision on the field with the disk in her hands,” Nightwatch head coach Ryan Balch said in an interview with ultiworld.com.
Shofner was greeted by a few friendly faces at her first match in Jacksonville. The University of Southern Florida women’s ultimate frisbee team made the trip from Tampa to watch her play. Shofner says the support from both males and females in the sport has been “breathtaking.”
According to Shofner’s former Fugue teammate, Gabby Aufderheide, there are “mixed attitudes” about the AUDL in general, because of the lack of opportunity for women to play. There are no women’s teams and it is understandably difficult for women to make a men’s team roster.
Shofner’s Fugue teammates at Oregon have been happy to see Shofner continue to build the Fugue legacy as she makes a name for herself in the professional world of ultimate frisbee.
“It was really awesome to know that people believe that she’s talented enough to play in the league,”Aufderheide said. “It’s cool to say that she was my captain and she’s been a big player in the Oregon community. To see her on the national stage like that is always awesome.”
Despite her success, Shofner says playing against men is no easy task. The most difficult part, she says, is defending cuts. Shofner works diligently to minimize her mistakes.
“Learning how to minimize your weaknesses and emphasize your strengths is part of the game in any facet, but especially in this environment for me,” she said.
With all the success that Shofner has had, she says that none of it would have been possible without her former Fugue teammates and longtime coach Lou Burruss.
“It prepared me for every facet of future play coming out of college and in my life,” she said. “I would not be the person I am — with the thought processes that I have, with the relationships that I have, any of it – without Fugue, without the University of Oregon women’s team.”
— No. 3 Oregon softball continued in its winning ways, sweeping Utah in a doubleheader on Sunday in Salt Lake City. The Ducks are now 29-0.
— The Oregon women’s lacrosse team had four players tally a hat trick in the Ducks’ win over George Mason on Monday.
— Oregon baseball won its series over Washington, beating the Huskies 4-3 on Friday and 1-0 on Saturday before falling 12-3 on Sunday. The Ducks have now won 10 of their last 12 games.
— Oregon track and field will split the team between Gainesville, Florida, for the Florida Relays and Stanford, California, for the Stanford Invite to open the outdoor season. The distance squad will head to California, while the sprinters, throwers and jumpers head to Florida. Despite the overwhelming hype for the women’s team, the men have a championship-contending group, as well.
Oregon women’s lacrosse had four players score hat tricks to defeat the George Mason Patriots, 17-12, on Monday in Fairfax, Virginia.
George Mason jumped to an early lead, scoring the first two goals of the game. That lead was short lived as Oregon responded with a 5-0 run to lead by three with 19 minutes remaining in the first half. Mariah Gatti scored the first two followed by a goal from Shannon Williams, Julia Bolte and Bella Pyne.
The Patriots scored two more goals to narrow the Oregon lead to one with less than 13 minutes in the half, but Oregon’s Jill Zubillaga scored her first goal of the day less than a minute later to put the Ducks back up by two.
The Ducks would go on to score four more goals compared to the Patriots’ two to finish out the half leading by three.
To start the second period, the Patriots came out fighting and narrowed the deficit to 1; however, Pyne responded by scoring her third and fourth goals of the game. With 16 minutes left in gameplay, the Ducks led 12-9.
George Mason’s Alexa McGovern was able to put one in the back of the net before Oregon rallied for a 4-0 run. Those goals were scored by Gatti, her third; Bolte, her second; and Zubillaga, her third. With ten minutes left on the clock, the Ducks led, 16-10.
George Mason finished off the game with two more goals, followed by one more from Williams to put her game total to four.
The Ducks ended the game with 27 shots on goal compared to the Patriots’ 18, to win 17-12.
Pyne led the team in goals with five, followed closely behind by Williams with four. Gatti and Zubillaga also had hat tricks to round off the top Oregon scorers. Cambi Cukar, who leads the MPSF in assists this season with 26, picked up a team-high five assists to bring her career total to 109. She needs only six more to break the all-time Oregon career assists record.
This win brings the Ducks’ record to 7-4 (3-1 MPSF).
The Ducks will now remain in Virginia and play its eighth-straight road game against Virginia on Wednesday.
A strong second half performance led the Towson Tigers over the Oregon lacrosse team, 10-7, on Saturday afternoon at Johnny Unitas Stadium in Towson, Maryland.
Sophomore Shannon Williams, the Ducks’ leading scorer, started off scoring less than four minutes into the game to give Oregon the early lead.
The lead was short lived, however, as Towson scored two consecutive goals to overtake the Ducks by 1. Oregon’s Bella Pyne tied the game with 1:26 left in the first quarter to finish off first half scoring.
William’s replicated her first half performance, scoring early to give the Ducks the lead. The Tigers responded two minutes later to tie it at 3.
Junior Jill Zubillaga scored with 24:21 remaining in the game to give the Ducks the lead once again. That goal was assisted by Oregon’s season assist leader Cambi Cukar. Cukar is currently second all-time in assists for the Ducks. This assist puts her career total at 105. She now only needs ten more to pass the current all-time record of 114.
That was the last time the Ducks would lead the Tigers. From there, Towson went on a 7-0 run to lead Oregon 10-4 with less than seven minutes remaining in the game.
The Ducks had a strong 3-0 run to follow with goals from Pyne, Zubillaga and Cukar, but it was not enough to overcome the deficit and the Tigers ultimately won 10-7.
The Ducks have lost three of its last four games and this loss puts the Ducks at 6-4 (3-1 MPSF) on the season. The Ducks sit at fourth in the MPSF standings behind Colorado, Stanford and USC, but there is still much conference play for the Ducks who finish the season with four-straight conference games.
The Ducks will conclude its seven-straight road game stretch as they head to Virginia to play George Mason on Monday and Virginia on Wednesday.
The Oregon women’s lacrosse team fell to the Colorado Buffaloes 16-11 Sunday afternoon in Boulder.
This loss marks the Ducks’ first MPSF loss of the season. Oregon’s record now comes to 6-3, 3-1 MPSP.
The Buffaloes came out strong, scoring five-straight goals to begin the game. The Ducks scored their first goal on the day with an unassisted goal from Shannon Williams with 10:22 remaining in the first half. The Ducks scored two more goals, while the Buffaloes scored three to end the half leading 8-3.
The Buffaloes didn’t let up during the second half, scoring two goals right out of the gate. Williams scored her second of the day and the Ducks’ first goal of the second half to narrow Oregon’s deficit to six.
Despite scoring another seven goals, the Ducks were unable to overcome the five point first half deficit and Colorado came away win the win, 16-11.
While Oregon only had one more turnover than Colorado with 17, Colorado was much better shooting with 28 shots on goal compared to Oregon’s 19.
Jill Zubillago, a starting defender, scored four goals to lead the Ducks in scoring. She has only scored one other goal all season.
Junior attacker Cambi Cukar led the team with four assist to bring her career total to 104. She is now just ten assists away from breaking Shannon Propst’s record of 114.
The Ducks now head to Towson, Maryland to take on the Towson Tigers on Saturday.
The Oregon women’s lacrosse team took down the Vermont Catamounts, 17-7, on Friday evening to improve to 6-2 (3-0 MPSF) on the season.
The Ducks came out strong and never looked back, scoring the first three goals of the game. Those goals came from Shannon Williams, Mariah Gatti and JoJo Hesketh. Vermont finally got one on the board with 23:32 on the clock, with a goal from Alison Bolt.
Oregon goalie Becca Katzen only let two more goals through during the first half, as the Ducks continued to up the points. Oregon scored seven-straight at one point to lead the Catamounts 12-3 at half.
The second half was a similar story. Oregon scored the first three goals of the half with goals from Williams, Hesketh and Cambi Cukar.
Although Vermont fought hard to come back from the nine point deficit, scoring four goals compared to Oregon’s two to finish out the game, the Catamounts were unable to come back and ultimately lost 17-7.
Cukar, who currently ranks second in Oregon for career assists, added one assist on the day to bring her career total to 100. She needs 15 more to pass Shannon Propst’s 115 and become Oregon’s all-time leader in assists.
Williams led the team in scoring with six total goals, followed by Cukar and Gatti who both had two.
Up next, the Ducks will return to conference play as they head to Boulder to play Colorado on Sunday.
