MEET THE COACHES OF OUR NEW SPORTS In the last edition of Horizons, we announced that Delaware Valley College was adding five NCAA Division III intercollegiate sports, with all five slated to begin play in 2014-15: men’s lacrosse, women’s lacrosse, men’s tennis, women’s tennis and women’s golf. Coaches have been hired for four of those sports. They are:
MEN’S LACROSSE – GARY MERCADANTE Mercadante spent the last four years as a full-time assistant coach at nearby Ursinus College. The team posted winning records in three of those four seasons. He was a four-year letter winner and two-year captain at Dickinson College and graduated from that institution in 2009.
WOMEN’S LACROSSE – RAMONA WALTERS Walters has coached at the Division III level for six years, including a stint as head coach at North Carolina Wesleyan College. She has been an assistant at Ithaca College and her alma mater, St. John Fisher College, where she was an Empire 8 all-conference honoree as a player. She graduated from St. John Fisher College in 2007.
MEN’S AND WOMEN’S TENNIS – DARCY RABENDA Rabenda brings two decades of teaching and coaching experience to DelVal. She has most recently served as the head boy’s and girl’s varsity tennis coach at nearby Pennridge High School. She played at Temple University and was a member of two Atlantic 10 Championship Teams (she still plays competitively). She graduated from Temple in 1998 and received her master’s from Wilkes University in 2008.
fa l l / w i n t e r R E C O R D S
OVERALL
CONFERENCE
Cross-Country – Men
invitationals only
14th/15 teams
Cross-Country – Women
invitationals only
15th/16 teams
Field Hockey 13-8 5-2 (1st/8 teams) *Freedom Conference Semifinalists; ECAC Mid-Atlantic Region Semifinalists Football 7-4 6-3 (Tied 3rd/10 teams) *ECAC South Atlantic Bowl Participants Soccer – Men
8-10-1 1-6 (8th/8 teams)
Soccer – Women
4-13-2 1-5-1 (Tied 7th/8 teams)
Volleyball
13-14 3-4 (Tied 4th/8 teams)
30 H O R I Z O N S | S P R I N G 2 0 1 4
However, the season was not over for DelVal as, the following Monday, the squad received word that it was selected as the number six seed in the eight-team ECAC Mid-Atlantic Region Championship field. The Aggies headed to Richard Stockton College on a cold November evening and led 3-1 in the second half before the Ospreys scored twice in a 37-second span to tie the contest and force overtime. Just 3:32 into the extra session, Prichett scored her second goal of the game to send DelVal to the semifinals. A 3-1 loss to secondseeded Stevens Institute of Technology ended the Aggies’ season to remember. The postseason accolades came in and Di Girolamo was named the Freedom Conference Coach of the Year. Prichett, who notched 22 goals (second-highest single-season total in school history) and 48 points, was a first-team selection for the first time, as was defender Lydia Spakosky ’15. Zook was a first-team honoree for the second year in a row at midfield. Summers, who set a school-record with 12 assists to go along with 12 goals for 36 points, picked up her first conference award by being named to the honorable mention squad. She was joined there by goalkeeper Sandra Edwards ’14, who was an honoree for the second straight year. Edwards was one of four seniors – Anastasia Bennett, Leah Hawthorn and Maddie Raville were the others – on the team and that quartet will go down as the senior leadership in the record-breaking 2013 DelVal field hockey campaign.