by Dan Rosenfield
It’s not often a player doubles up their scoring total from their first two seasons combined. However, that is exactly what Women’s Lacrosse attacker Christine Long did, and then some.
UD Women’s Lacrosse attacker Christine Long Photo from Bluehens.com
Long, a junior, scored 41 goals in her first two seasons, 19 and 22 respectively. She turned her play up a few notches this year and scored 42 goals, including a stretch of five games in a row with a hat trick.
“I think this year being an upperclassman was a big deal for me, I think that it made me step more into a leadership role,” Long said on what fueled her offensive performance during the year.
She was quick to credit her teammates, most notably, junior midfielder Mia DeRuggiero, who credited most of her own success back to Long.
“We’ve been working together for three years and we kind of get to know each other’s tendencies, like we have good chemistry on the field and off the field,” DeRuggiero said. “I feel like I just know now where she wants the ball and she knows where I feed the ball so we adjust to each other and if something’s not working in a game, we pull each other aside and we’re like ‘we gotta figure it out, we gotta get it together’ and then we do, so we just work a lot together.”
“I contribute a lot of my success to my teammates, most specifically Mia DeRuggiero. She assists the majority of my goals,” Long said. “Also just everyone on my team, everyone being really supportive is a big thing for that.”
Long also credited a past teammate, Becky Gohsler, a former midfielder who graduated last year, for helping her transition into a bigger role.
“She was kind of someone I looked up to over the past few years, and I communicate with her a lot,” Long said of Gohsler. “Her playing such a big role on our team has kind of helped me, kind of having her as a mentor to look up to and talk to has helped me a lot in preparing me for my role this season.”
Lacrosse runs in Christine’s blood. Her dad played at Cornell University, on a team that made it to the National Championship game in 1987. Interestingly enough however, Long was not sold on lacrosse right away, but it was the impact the game had on her family that made her stay with it.
“He was kind of a big influence on my life, for me playing the sport so he kind of got me into it, I started at a pretty young age,” Long said. “It wasn’t my favorite sport but I kind of swayed more towards that in high school. I have a little brother who plays lacrosse also so he was kind of a big reason why I played. We grew up playing together a lot so that was something that made the sport more special to me, just how it had so much meaning to my family.“
Long’s parents will have some tough decisions to make next year as Christine’s younger brother will also be playing lacrosse at Cornell as a freshman.
“They haven’t really missed any of my games in college,” Long said of her parents not missing her games. They missed one for my cousin’s wedding this year, so that was kind of a big deal for me not to have them there. Next year my parent’s will have a lot of games to go to so that’ll be interesting to see how they handle that, but they claim claim they are going to come to all of my games over his, so we’ll have to see.”
The Blue Hens finished the season fifth in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) with an overall record of 7-10 (1-5 CAA). Long is ready to lead the Blue Hens next season for her senior year, and will try to help them do something they have never done before: win a Colonial Athletic Association Championship.