In a tale of two halves, the Massachusetts women’s lacrosse team won by its largest margin of victory of the season in a dominant fashion. 

UMass (2-4, 1-0 Atlantic 10) faced George Mason (6-2, 0-1 Atlantic 10) and took care of business on the road in its first game of conference play. Skylar Simmonds’ season high five goals led the Minutewomen to a 20-8 demolition of the Patriots. 

To close the first half, while the scoreboard showed a three goal difference in favor of the Minutewomen, it was a game of momentum shifts. At the break, head coach Jana Drummond’s message to the team was clear as day. 

“Set each other up for success. You might not be the one scoring but what you’re doing in that role is very critical.” Drummond said. 

From that point on, UMass took the game by storm as Kassidy Morris and Skylar Simmonds combined for five of the six UMass goals in the third period. The Minutewomen continued a 10-0 scoring run over a 15 minute window. Catrina Tobin finished with five saves on 19 shots while only giving up eight goals. 

“Everyone on the offensive end was really buying into the role that they had, whichever, you know, play it was at that moment, they were doing a good job of executing and setting each other up for success,” Drummond said.

This was an all around team effort. With three major leaders in Fiona Mcgowan, Simmonds and Morris, UMass had nine different goal scorers. 

“You could definitely feel that energy, that excitement, that chemistry between [them]…buying into what they needed to do for the team and the excitement they have for one to one another, scoring or in assists, it was really great to see,” Drummond said. “And they’ve been really working hard on it off the field, to have that kind of connection on the field.” 

To add to the accolades, Saturday marked the fifth game in a row Kassidy Morris scored over three goals in a game. After a very difficult stretch to start the season, the future could be bright for a Minutewomen team that since the Brown loss has been getting healthier and stronger each week that passes. 

“Just thinking about and focusing on us is the biggest thing of this team is so incredible,” Drummond said. “So it’s focusing on our strengths and highlighting those also putting all the work in to make it better to bring it all together and again for a full 60 minutes, such as a couple of minutes here and there.”

The Minutewomen will head back to Amherst in their next matchup to continue their conference play against the Saint Joseph’s Hawks on Saturday. March 16th at 1 p.m.  

Mehrob Fatemi can be reached at on Twitter @mehrobfatemi