Princeton Women's Lacrosse 2022 Outlook
February 15, 2022 | Women's Lacrosse
The 2022 Princeton women’s lacrosse season is the last go-round for Tiger head coach Chris Sailer, who is retiring this year after a 36-year Hall-of-Fame career that has seen her win three NCAA championships and 15 Ivy League championships.
There will be plenty of time to celebrate Sailer’s astonishing career as the season goes along. At the same time, that is not where her focus is right now. No, that focus is solely on what her 2022 team will be.
Just as this will be it for Sailer, it is also the last season for the nine senior members of the team. That group includes five players who took off from school last year to be able to come back for another run together. All five will be fourth-year starters, and the group includes All-Americans and potential national team players.
In addition to those five, Princeton has eight other players who started one of the five games in 2020, as well as a deep roster of freshmen and sophomores who will be making their college debuts, several of them in key roles.
Here’s a position-by-position look at the 2022 Tigers (an * indicates a player lettered only in the 2020 Covid season in which Princeton did not play any games)
Attack
Starters returning (started at least one game in 2020) – Gaby Hamburger, Kate Mulham, Kyla Sears, Grace Tauckus
Other returning letterwinners – Meghan Curran, Ellie Mueller*, Olivia Koch*, Tara Shecter
Newcomers – McKenzie Blake, Nina Montes
Kyla Sears is as good a scorer as the program has ever seen and has been so since she started her career with a four-goal, two-assist game that was a prelude to a 64-goal freshman year. She enters her senior year with career numbers of 139 goals and 68 assists for 207 points (in 44 career games), which leaves her in sixth place all-time at Princeton, 78 points away from Olivia Hompe’s career record. Sears, who is also one of the best ever to play at Princeton at drawing free position shots, has been a first-team All-Ivy League and second-team All-American selection in both of her full seasons; she is also a member of the USA Lacrosse Sixes National Pool.
One of Princeton’s biggest challenges will be to develop other scorers to take the pressure off of Sears, a task for which there is no shortage of possibilities. Among the returnees, Grace scored 17 goals while starting every game in her abbreviated freshman year, when her 17 goals came on just 24 shots, for a team-best .708 shooting percentage. She had at least two in every game, with a six-goal outburst against Villanova. Kate Mulham has played in five career games as well, after missing her freshman year due to injury. Still a junior after withdrawing from school last year, Mulham scored six goals and added two assists while starting three of the five games in 2020.
There are two freshmen who should make an immediate impact. McKenzie Blake, a two-time high school All-American who was a three-time New Jersey state high school champion at Haddonfield High, is a lefthanded scorer and feeder down low. Nina Montes, who finished her All-American high school career at St. Ignatius in Chicago with 160 goals and 71 assists, is a dodging attacker who can score and feed on the run.
Among the other newcomers who will look for playing time is Ellie Mueller, a sophomore who is the daughter of Kit Mueller, the 1990 and 1991 Ivy League men’s basketball Player of the Year at Princeton.
Midfield
Starters returning (started at least one game in 2020) – Shannon Berry, Kari Buonanno, Lucie Gildehaus, Maria Pansini
Other returning letterwinners – Samantha DeVito*, Lillian Stout
Newcomers – Sarah Nelson, Sophie Whiteway
Like Tauckus on attack, midfielder Kari Buonanno had a blistering start to her freshman year, when she scored 14 goals with four assists in five games. Also like Tauckus, she had at least two in every game, with a high-game of four. Buonanno brings an explosiveness to the midfield, and she looked even better in the fall and now in the preseason.
There is a deep, balanced group of midfielders who will join Buonanno. Lucie Gildehaus is the only senior among the group, and she had two goals while starting twice in 2020. Maria Pansini and Shannon Berry withdrew from school last year and are now members of the junior class. They both started one game in 2020, when Pansini had three goals and three assists (after a six-goal, two-assist freshman year) and Berry once again showed herself to be a strong two-way middie who is excellent in transition.
Lillian Stout had a strong freshman year in 2019 with four goals, nine draw controls and a key second-half performance in the Ivy tournament championship game win over Penn. She then missed the 2020 season due to injury and withdrew last year, leaving her as another junior, one who has not played in a game in nearly three years.
Two players who have been very impressive in the fall and now in the preseason are freshman Sophie Whiteway and sophomore Samantha DeVito, both of whom should be major contributors. DeVito was a great all-around athlete at Ballston Spa High near Saratoga, having neen a three- or four-year starter in soccer and basketball in addition to lacrosse. DeVito’s high school numbers were off the charts, with 109 goals, 85 assists, 194 points, 263 draw controls, 271 ground balls and 159 caused turnovers. Whiteway, from Holton Arms School outside of Washington, D.C., likewise put up ridiculous high school numbers, with 211 goals, 31 assists, 242 points, 235 draw controls and 96 caused turnovers.
Defense
Starters returning (all started all five games in 2020) – Marge Donovan, Mary Murphy, Olivia Pugh
Other returning letterwinners – Caroline Burnett, Sammy Filippi*, Taylor DeGroff*, Annie Price, Christy Sieber, Shea Smith, Abbie Wilhelm
Newcomers – Mia James, Paige Vegna, Sam Whiting
The unquestioned strength of this team is on the defensive end of the field, where Princeton will have four players (including the goalie) start for their fourth season. The three returnees on defense are up there with any trio Sailer has had.
It starts with Marge Donovan, an All-American who like Sears is also in the USA Lacrosse Sixes Pool. Donovan is fast, intense and relentless on defense, as well as ferocious on the circle on draws, and she led the Tigers in ground balls, draw controls and caused turnovers in 2020 after leading the team in caused turnovers and ground balls in 2019 and caused turnovers and draw controls in 2018.
Joining Donovan, as they have since they were freshmen together in 2018, will be seniors Olivia Pugh and Mary Murphy, who between them have 50 caused turnovers. Both are excellent defenders on and off the ball, and they have a world of experience individually and together. The three have been on the team for 44 games, and all three have started in 42 of them.
The fourth starting defender is likely to be sophomore Sammy Filippi, who unlike her teammates has yet to play in a game. Sam Whiting, a freshman, is also in the mix for the fourth starting spot or to see time off the bench.
Goalie
Starter returning (started all five games in 2020) – Sam Fish
Newcomer – Tia Reaman
Along with her three defensive teammates, goalie Sam Fish is also no stranger to starting for the Tigers. In fact, Fish has started the last 37 Princeton games in goal.
Fish enters her senior year having twice been named All-Ivy League, and she was an Inside Lacrosse Honorable Mention All-American as a sophomore.