Each week, The Baltimore Sun will publish a Q&A with a college lacrosse player or coach. This week's guest is Mount St. Mary's senior attacker Erin Seipp.
The Notre Dame Prep graduate is third on her team in goals (15) and points (19) and is among the leaders in draw controls and caused turnovers.
One of just four Mountaineer seniors, Seipp led them in assists last season and was on the Northeast Conference All-Rookie team as a freshman. A business management major, she plans to begin studying for her MBA next fall.
How is the team adjusting to new coach Lauren Schwarzmann?
It's definitely been a big adjustment the way practice is run and how she prefers things over our previous coach, but it's been a lot of fun. I expected the change to be a lot harder than it was, but the whole coaching staff is really cool. Lauren's really worked with the seniors to see how the team works and what we like and we've seen a lot of progress since last season. We had a rough season (3-13), so the biggest thing was getting past that and making sure we work on the things we need to and she's definitely focused on that.
What kind of changes has she made in your attack?
We used to be more of a driving team and now she works with us more on feeding and working together, cutting through the 8 (meter arc) and just playing more as a unit. We used to have no assists and it was all just points for individual players. Now we're making more use of the girls behind the goal and around the crease to create goals.
Do you like those changes?
I really do like it. I think it will go a long way in the next few years especially just because we've been so used to being a driving team with everyone clearing out for one girl to dodge where now you have to create your own space, so it's something we've got to work with. I think we've gotten better but in the next few years, the girls will be so much better at it.
Your team's record isn't that great at 1-9, but have you seen improvements?
The record definitely does not reflect how far we've come. We had a rough start to our conference this past weekend (13-7 loss to Wagner). We really didn't play well that game. We were really excited for the conference and we kind of let all the pre-conference jitters get to us. Everyone expects us to lose to all of our pre-conference games, so finally we got out there and said, "This is our conference. Let's dominate." I think we let it get to our heads a little bit instead of focusing on what we've been working on, so we need to take a step back this week and focus on the small things that we didn't do well in the last game in order to get the wins in the next few games.
As an attacker, what have you learned from being coached by a two-time Tewaaraton Award winner, assistant coach Katie Schwarzmann?
She's helped us especially with dodging one-vs-one. She's really good at pointing out the small things we have to fix even if it's just like, "Your hips need to be faced outward a little bit more or you need to square up because you're letting her know you're going left," so she's been a lot of help pointing out the small things. If we're hanging our stick too far out so the defender can check, she's really good at coaching us through how to fix that and how to make our dodging better and our protection better especially after our dodge. Watching her and even just trying to imitate her has been more help than anything so far.
You only have 20 players on this team. What are the benefits of having such a small team?
How close we are is one of the biggest things with such a small team. We all know each other really well. We know when something's bothering someone and most times, if not everyone then someone knows how to talk them, get them out of a bad mood. And there's not a lot of division within the team. We all hang out nonstop and we're all really close. I think that shows on the field in the way we work together and we play well together.