Grace Gabriel has the two best campaigns in program history and two of the three 50 goal seasons. Can anyone challenge her this year?
By now, you should be more than familiar with our series of regularly updating leaderboards for various Marquette Golden Eagles sports accomplishments. Keep checking back to that link in the previous sentence for our charts as the seasons continue to churn through history and MU’s various teams continue to create new memories and accomplishments.
Here, we take a look at the women’s lacrosse program’s single season record for goals.
We didn’t take a look at this chart at the end of the 2022 season, as no one challenged Grace Gabriel’s record of 59 goals in a season. Nor did anyone challenge Gabriel’s 2nd best season, which was 56 goals. Last season’s top scorer was Shea Garcia, who finished up 2022 with 45 goals.
As we make the turn into the second half of the season, we have four Golden Eagles with at least 20 goals and thus if not literally on pace to get into the top 10 all time with at least 40 goals in a year, then at least within shouting distance of it. Lydia Foust leads the way for Marquette as of this writing, heading into the first game of Big East play. She has 32 goals, which has her averaging just over a hat trick per game since MU has played 10 games to this point of the campaign. Marquette has seven games guaranteed to them left on the schedule, so that has Foust on pace for 54 goals this year, and if the Golden Eagles can clinch a Big East tournament berth, that would have her knocking on the door of Gabriel’s record of 59.
Meg Bireley (26), Shea Garcia (26), and Tess Osburn (22) are the other three competitors as the charge up the single season chart continues onwards. Bireley and Garcia are both on track for 44 goals this season, which would be a tie with Charlotte McGuire’s current 5th best total in program history. We’ll have to wait to see if it’s still fifth when they get there depending on where Foust’s scoring pace heads. Osburn is on track for 37 goals before the regular season ends, and that would be good enough for a tie with Caroline Steller for what is currently 12th place all time. That could be 15th place all time by the end of the season, but if Osburn wants to step up the pace, I’m not going to shout about it. I will point out that if Osburn gets even with Steller, that will be a freshman record for goals in a season as Gabriel’s sophomore year in 2017 stands as the only underclassman season north of 37 goals.
Here’s the chart as it currently stands following Marquette’s game against Central Michigan.