Capital women's lacrosse team earns Ohio Athletic Conference title, first NCAA berth

With an eye on starting a master’s program, it made sense to Brooke Delara to remain at Capital for the 2021-22 school year after earning a bachelor’s degree from the university.

The 2017 Olentangy Orange graduate also had a year of athletics eligibility remaining, which made the choice to stick with the Capital women’s lacrosse program even easier.

Her belief that the Comets could be in for a special season wound up being correct, as they beat John Carroll 22-14 on May 7 to capture their first Ohio Athletic Conference tournament championship and advance to the NCAA Division III tournament for the first time.

“I felt good coming back because I knew we left off last year in a good place and were getting a lot of new talent, and we had old talent that was growing,” Delara said. “It’s been amazing to see.”

The Comets earned the OAC’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament and opened the postseason with a 21-4 win over Hamline on May 14 at the University of Chicago.

On May 15, Capital lost to the host Maroons 19-14 in a second-round game to finish 20-1.

Delara was a leader in the program’s breakthrough this spring – and only part of a contingent of central Ohio players who set up the Comets’ run.

Of the 18 players listed on Capital’s roster, 10 were from central Ohio, including the top six scorers.

“It just helps that everyone’s from here, and for even those who aren’t, we’ve made it feel like a second home,” Delara said. “That’s really special.”

The only other graduate student in the program was 2017 Hartley graduate Katie Page, who had 24 goals and five assists in her first season with the team.

“We’ve got a lot of Columbus kids,” coach Stacey Florence said. “Capital is a good commuter school, but the kids here just love the atmosphere and the small campus. We’re close to a big city, but it has that small-campus vibe. I’ve been here for nine years and I love Capital. It’s my home and these girls want to stay close to home.”

Florence, who is from Buffalo, guided Capital to OAC runner-up finishes in 2016, ’18 and ’19 and picked up her 100th victory with the program when the Comets beat Heidelberg 20-3 on April 27.

“I’ve never been a part of a team that wanted something so badly,” said senior attacker Luci Kanowsky, a 2018 Hartley graduate. “We’ve been working so hard and it’s amazing to finally accomplish our end goals. Everybody wants it and wants to push each other to get better, so it really helps having a person next to you that wants you to be better but also wants to better themselves. It really helps having somebody push you to be the best lacrosse player you can be.”

Kanowsky was one of six players to graduate May 7 during a ceremony that took place about seven hours before the OAC championship game.

One of the other seniors is Maddy Radanof, a 2018 Pickerington North graduate who started most of the season at defender.

Junior midfielder Avery Hart and sophomore defender Rylee Jarvis also are North graduates, while junior attacker Dylan Smith and freshman midfielder Grace Osborn are Pickerington Central graduates.

Also on the team were sophomore Julia Foresi, an attacker from Gahanna Lincoln, and classmate Abigail Midnight, a midfielder from Thomas Worthington.

“It’s just so nice having another family,” Osborn said. “Since the time we started practicing, we felt like the offense clicked. We fixed the little mistakes and clicked well together. We know when to slow the ball down and when to speed up and we’ve just worked as a team.”

Delara finished with 79 goals and 88 assists and is first in program history with 389 career points. Her 167 points this year is the single-season program record and just ahead of Osborn, who finished with 156 points (126 goals, 30 assists).

Kanowsky had 90 goals and 31 assists, and Foresi had 25 goals and 23 assists.

Foresi, who scored 54 goals as a junior for Gahanna in 2019 before her senior season was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, attended Ohio State in 2021 but did not compete in lacrosse.

She enrolled at Capital in the fall but didn’t participate in workouts with the team until this spring.

“I transferred here to play, and it was a great decision,” she said. “In the preseason, we definitely knew we had some talent, but the first couple games we were putting up running clocks on teams without having a lot of experience working with each other, so we knew we could build a great team. We definitely knew we could make this happen. We just had to put our head down and work hard for it.”

The team’s No. 1 focus was “playing better every single game,” Florence said.

“They want to get better at things and they want to keep learning,” she said. “The leadership on our team is unreal and unmatched, and the seniors did this. They worked their butt off for four years and have been in the (OAC) championship game before, but we’ve never won it.

“I knew something was different in the preseason when we just clicked really, really fast. I’d give them small drills to do and they would turn those drills into plays. The chemistry was just there early and we knew if we could build off of that, it would be awesome.”

julrey@thisweeknews.com

@UlreyThisWeek

This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Capital women's lacrosse team earns OAC title, first NCAA berth