This past weekend, the UCSB women’s club lacrosse team traveled to San Diego for the Surfside Cup. While Santa Barbara was only scheduled to play San Diego State and Arizona State, a large amount of big names in college lacrosse made appearances in the multi-division tourney. The NCAA team from Colorado was there, as well as the four time defending NCAA national championship team from Northwestern University. To cap it off, the Canadian national lacrosse team also played in the Cup. Still, after all was said and done, only two teams came out of the tournament undefeated: Northwestern and UCSB.

“It is a great feeling to start our season 2-0,” senior captain and defenseman Selina Eadie said. “Even better, however, was that our team learned from our mistakes over last weekend’s games and we are really learning to play as a team and not just individuals. We don’t want to be overconfident but I think our success is making us all the more excited to prepare for the competition we’ll face this season.”

En route to the perfect start, the #4 Gauchos first dismantled San Diego State on Saturday to the tune of 18-5, and then blew through Arizona State, defeating the Sun Devils 20-5. In both games, the leading scorer was junior attacker Samantha Lutz, who had five goals and one assist against SD State, and four goals against Arizona State. However, the dominant wins by the Gauchos were not solely thanks to Lutz. Against San Diego, nine players contributed goals on offense. Against Arizona, that number went up to 11.

“Our whole emphasis is on sharing the ball on offense,” Head Coach Paul Ramsey said. “We don’t want one or two players being the only ones involved. What really helps with that is the consistency in skill level for everyone. Certainly some players have better sticks than others but everyone trusts everyone when it’s time to move the ball. It is also not really about who scores for us. It’s about getting the ball to the player in position to score. That’s anyone cutting at anytime.”

The Gauchos also played very well on defense, allowing only 10 goals total over two games.

“The defense started to jell in the second half against San Diego State, showing that getting game action against someone else is helpful,” Ramsey said. “San Diego State was running a few different isolation plays trying to set it up for their better players to get it done themselves. They got four goals that way in the first half but we took care of them with some adjustments in the second half. Conversely, their defense couldn’t really single out any single one of our attackers to key on.”

The Gauchos have five starters and three reserves returning from last season, but have added 12 new players to the team. That many new faces could be a problem for some teams, but Santa Barbara showed no signs of problems during the Cup.

“I was delighted with our team’s first two games,” senior captain and midfielder Katie Moran said. “All of this skill is there, now we’re just trying to gain composure on the field and learn to work together.”