Cara Romanowski

Jenny Burns

It was quite a week for the Wittenberg women's lacrosse program. After a week off, the Tigers opened the 2002 North Coast Athletic Conference schedule with a pair of overtime thrillers at Edwards-Maurer Field.

On Saturday, the Tigers defeated Oberlin in a 9-8 overtime decision. Less than 24 hours later, Allegheny was the victim in comeback fashion as Wittenberg rallied on several occasions to finally pull out a 13-12 overtime victory and hand Tiger Head Coach Nancy Beck her 100th career victory. The wins pushed Wittenberg into the early NCAC lead at 2-0 and 4-3 overall, heading into an important week of conference action that includes a road game at Earlham on Wednesday and a home game against Denison on Saturday.

The two wins were keyed by the play of junior Cara Romanowski (Collegeville, Pa./Perkiomen Valley), who had eight goals (four in each game), three assists, 15 ground balls and five caused turnovers in the two games. Her outstanding performances earned effusive praise from her coach and NCAC Player of the Week honors.

While Romanowski was hard at work, freshman teammate Jenny Burns (Dublin, Ohio/Coffman) was making her mark as well. The team's second-leading scorer behind Romanowski, a defender, Burns had the first and last goals in the win over Oberlin to go along with a second-half assist. Against Allegheny, she one-upped herself with three of Wittenberg's last five goals, including two in overtime after the Gators had taken a brief lead. The game-winner came with just six seconds left in the game.

Also playing well was senior Erin Jacobsen (Fairport, NY/Penfield), who found the back of the net four times, including three in the clutch come-from-behind win over Allegheny.