Buccaneers prove to be good sports

June 7, 2012

By Rachel Fox, Boston Herald

The March 31 win recorded by the Massachusetts Maritime women’s lacrosse team against Elms College extended beyond the playing field to a greater platform: sportsmanship.

Two days after the first-year varsity program snapped an 0-5 start to the season and recorded the first victory in program history against Wheelock College, the Buccaneers traveled to Chicopee for its inaugural New England Women’s Lacrosse Alliance match.

Minutes into the game, an injury sidelined an Elms player and forced the Blazers to play shorthanded due to a lack of substitutes. Mass. Maritime coach Julie Rigo made eye contact with an assistant coach and without hesitation told her, “You’re not going to like this, but we have to do the right thing.”

In a display of sportsmanship, Rigo removed one of her players from the field so that it would be an even 10-on-10 game. When injury struck down another Elms player, Rigo removed another Buccaneer from the lineup to create a 9-on-9 matchup.

“Honestly, I think that’s just fair play,” Rigo said. “There was definitely a risk, but we knew we had to do it.”

Mass. Maritime won, 9-6, for its second, and final, victory of the season. The performance also earned the Buccaneers the Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference Presidential Sportsmanship Award, presented annually to a student-athlete or team that exemplifies the values of respect, fairness, honesty and integrity in the competitive arena of intercollegiate athletics.

“We just kind of felt good about ourselves, winning it and keeping in mind that we had played a team was equal to our level and won it fair and square,” senior Shauna Callinan said. “We had been working very hard in our first varsity season. We had all come together; we’d been teaching each other how to play.”

Like any first-year varsity program, the Buccaneers had struggles to overcome, including having 12 women on the 19-man roster who never touched a lacrosse stick before this year.

“One thing they do very well is accept consequences,” Rigo said. “If a team beat us, no one on our team turned and yelled at each other. . . . They took losses with dignity and grace."