The St. Mary's men's lacrosse team knows where it is and what it is aiming for.
Opening the season with four consecutive losses has put the Seahawks out of contention for an at-large bid to the NCAA Division III tournament. Their only path to the postseason is capturing the Capital Athletic Conference tournament and the accompanying automatic qualifier, and coach Chris Hasbrouck said players and coaches alike are aware of their situation.
"Our focus is completely and wholly now on preparing for April," he said Monday morning. "We're where we need to be one of those top six teams to make the tournament because I think when it's conference tournament time, our goal is to hit our stride."
A tumultuous winter forced St. Mary's (3-4 overall and 2-1 in the league) to cancel games against Roanoke and Muhlenberg, shift contests against Washington College and Salisbury indoors to The Calverton School, and reschedule a game against Dickinson several times.
The weather also wiped out the team's practices on a field. According to Hasbrouck, after completing a practice on Feb. 13, the Seahawks did not practice again outdoors until March 9.
"We're about a month behind, and that's no excuse," he said. "It was our guys and our team, and we know the things that we have to deal with playing here. This was just a little bit of a more difficult time for us. But now we've been having some really good practices. The kids are playing extremely hard. We're still working some things out, but we're looking forward to April. I'm glad March is done."
St. Mary's can move forward with a win on Wednesday against conference rival York. The Spartans (6-4, 2-0) lost four times in a five-game stretch, but have since won three straight.
"York's going through some growing pains and changes as everybody does, but they had a great win on Saturday and have won three in a row," Hasbrouck said. "They're playing well, and they've got a good group. For us, we're looking at it as a big game, but it's not the biggest game. It's not going to end or begin our season either way on Wednesday. We want to go out and we want to play better on Wednesday than we did on Saturday. …
"We know what's at stake. But for us, it's another opportunity to go out there and play a good conference opponent, and that's what we really want to do."