Grand Valley State University’s women’s lacrosse won their first home game of the season against Northern Michigan University (16-8) to extend their record to 6-4 on the season and 2-0 in the GLIAC.

Although a familiar matchup against the Wildcats, this game was recognized as the “Morgan’s Message” game which is created to help eliminate the stigma around mental health within the sports world, highlighting the need for student athletes to reach out and access the many resources catered toward mental and physical health.

Senior midfielder Molly Bursinger demonstrated the importance of the Morgan’s Message game as one of the top-three offensive players, while stating that this match fueled her to perform at a high level.

“The stigma related to mental health is something that affects so many student athletes, and I want to do my part in raising awareness for that,” Bursinger said.

Alongside the idea of making a difference, freshman attacker Gracie Bancroft also spoke to the importance that Morgan’s Message has had on the entire team. 

“Through the season we’ve had so far, our team has been faced with challenges and adversity already,” Bancroft said. “Playing in the game today put our team into a perspective of playing for a bigger cause and shedding light on playing for mental health.”

On top of this initiative, Bancroft mentioned the importance of sticking to the game plan has been to the team not only in the recent bout against NMU, but throughout the season thus far.

“Our team came out with the start of the game with confidence and poise, knowing the game plan and executing it,” Bancroft said.

Overall, it was a solid game played offensively and defensively. Junior attacker Maddy Champagne led the Lakers with five goals, followed by Bursinger and graduate student midfielder Maggie Hammer (three), sophomore midfielders Zoe Ziegler and Ashleigh Rothe (two) and Bancroft (one).

“Offensively, we worked really well as a unit to get everyone on the field involved,” Bursinger said. “This means finding the right looks and executing the shots we were taking. Defensively we communicated through everything, and adapted as mistakes were made.”

The boxscore displayed exactly what the Lakers stressed as the team out-paced the Wildcats 29-14 for shots on goal attempts as junior goalie Audrey Maloney saved six of those 14 attempts.

GVSU came out of the gates hot as they led by three goals at the end of the first quarter (5-2), adding three more goals to their total while only allowing the Wildcats to score once throughout the next 15 minutes as the Lakers took an 8-3 into the halftime break.

“As we adapted, we were able to become more aggressive when the ball was on the ground, allowing us to gain extra possessions,” Bursinger said.

Much of the same continued over the remaining 30 minutes of the match with the Lakers outsourcing NMU 8-5 to take a dominant 16-8 victory.

With the month of April consisting of their final matches of the regular season, GVSU will face off against Notre Dame College on the road April 2 to kick off their six-game stretch this month.