The Georgetown University women's lacrosse team will open NCAA Championship play on Friday in a first round matchup. The Hoyas earned one of 15 automatic bids and will face the University of Pennsylvania at 4 p.m. The game will be hosted by Syracuse University and played at the SU Soccer Stadium in Syracuse, New York.
Georgetown (11-8) earned the automatic bid by winning the BIG EAST Championship on Saturday defeating top-seeded Denver 9-8 in double overtime. The squad came back from a 6-0 deficit and scored five unanswered goals to win their first championship since 2010. The Hoyas are currently ranked No. 20 in the country.
Senior
Francesca Whitehurst (Baltimore, Md. / Roland Park Country School) tallied two goals in the contest, including the game-winning goal and was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player.
Michaela Bruno (Garden City, N.Y. / Garden City) and
Taylor Gebhardt (Baldwinsville, N.Y. / C.W. Baker) also netted two goals while
Ali Diamond (Lafayette Hill, Pa. / Plymouth-Whitemarsh) and Gebhardt led the Hoyas with three points each. Goalkeeper
Haelle Chomo (Naples, Fla. / Barron Collier) notched eight saves.
This marks Georgetown's 16th trip to the NCAA Tournament and the second consecutive. The Blue & Gray is 14-15 all-time in the NCAA Tournament. The furthest the Hoyas have advanced is to the championship game in both 2001 and 2002. Last year, the Hoyas fell to Virginia Tech 13-10 at a neutral site in North Carolina.
Whitehurst and Gebhardt lead the team in scoring with 68 and 61 points, respectively. Whitehurst has 40 goals and a squad-best 28 assists, while Gebhardt has managed 43 goals with 18 assists on the season. They are followed by senior
Morgan Ryan (Maplewood, N.J. / Oak Knoll School) in third with a team-high 44 goals, while Bruno is fourth with 30 goals to go along with 13 assists on the year.
Whitehurst has 70 draw controls and junior
Natalia Lynch (Smithtown, N.Y. / Smithtown West) is second with 48. Lynch and defender
Noelle Peragine (Northport, N.Y. / Northport) both have 22 caused turnovers for the year. In goal, Chomo has played a majority of the minutes in the cage with 133 saves and a 10.31 goals-against average for the season.
Penn is 12-5 on the season and advanced to the Ivy League Championship before falling to Princeton 13-9. Penn has qualified for 13 consecutive NCAA Tournaments dating back to 2007 which is the fifth-longest active streak in the country. Junior Erin Barry was named the 2019 Ivy League Midfielder of the Year, leading a group of eight All-Ivy honorees for the Quakers. The squad is currently ranked No. 12 in the nation.
The Hoyas are 1-6 all-time against the Quakers. The squads have met every season since 2014 with the Hoyas never being able to pull out the victory. This season the Hoyas fell 8-7 in Philadelphia. Whitehurst led the way this spring with three goals and three draw controls against the Quakers, while Ryan managed two goals in the contest. Gebhardt was the third Hoya with multiple points scoring a goal and an assist. This will be the first meeting for the squads in the NCAA Tournament.
The winner of the game will face the fifth-seeded Syracuse Orange on Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets for each day are $8 for adults and $5 for youth ages 18 and under and for students from participating institutions. They can be purchased through WeAreGeorgetown.com or at the Carrier Dome.
The game will be broadcast live on ESPN3, links to the broadcast and live stats will be available at
www.GUHoyas.com.
