The men’s lacrosse team started off strong but ultimately fell to Kenyon College 12–6 on Wednesday night, as the Lords put seven unanswered goals past the Yeomen during the middle of the game. The loss extended Oberlin’s 19-year losing streak against Kenyon and effectively ended the Yeomen’s playoff hopes.

“I think we were ready for the game, we were well-prepared; we just didn’t perform,” said senior captain and midfielder Sean Seaman. “We didn’t come out with enough energy and we didn’t put together a full sixty minutes of lacrosse.”

The first quarter featured exciting, back-and-forth action, as the Yeomen answered each of the Lords’ goals with one of their own. Junior attacker Nick Lobley found the back of the net twice in the first quarter, en route to providing half of the Yeoman’s goals with a hat-trick. Later in the quarter, sophomore midfielder Kinori Rosnow electrified the crowd when he single-handedly won a faceoff, ran up the field and scored a goal just 13 seconds after Kenyon had scored. With approximately a minute remaining in the first quarter, the game was tied at three.

But in the second and third quarters, Kenyon’s speedy, counterattacking style proved too much for the Oberlin defense, as the Lords created space for themselves by beating defenders and then immediately capitalizing.

“They really took advantage in transition; they’re a good transition team,” Seaman said. “When we were settled, our defense was better than their offense at times, but they just pushed transition so well.”

However, even in the second and third quarters the game did not appear one-sided. Oberlin often dominated possession, largely thanks to Rosnow, who won 18 out of 21 face-offs for the Yeomen.

“He’s arguably one of our best players this year,” Seaman said of Rosnow. “If you have possession that often, you should win the game. We need to just take care of the ball once we get it — because he’s winning us the ball — and we need to be taking advantage of those opportunities.”

In the last quarter, the Yeomen recovered some of their early-game swagger and laid siege to the Kenyon goal. Oberlin had 20 shots in the final 15 minutes and scored three goals, one from Lobley and two from junior midfielder Matt Fox. Still, their late game heroics were not enough to make up for the team’s mid-game lapse.

“They have a good defense, they have a good goalie, so we knew we needed to generate a lot of shots to try and get as many goal opportunities,” said Head Coach Topher Grossman. “Their goalie made some very good saves. The bulk of our shots came when we really needed them, and that was at the end of the game. We definitely needed to get the ball on cage if we were going to get any goals out of it.”

The Yeomen end their season with a trip to Wabash College this Saturday and home games against Hiram College and DePauw University on Tuesday and next Saturday respectively. For Grossman, the focus is now on finishing the season as strongly as possible.

“If we take it one game at a time for the next three games, we’re going to end the third consecutive year above .500, the first time that we’ve done that in Lord knows how long.”