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MARQUETTE — The season is winding down for the Northern Michigan University lacrosse team.

While there’s still plenty to accomplish, this women’s program achieved several records on Friday with its fifth victory of the season, 19-5 over Ashland.

The Wildcats then topped that by completing a sweep of the Eagles two days later with a 25-13 win to improve to 6-3 overall and 4-0 in the GLIAC. In addition, the team won its third game in a row on Friday, which became four straight on Sunday, for the first time since the inception of the program as a varsity sport in 2017.

Northern Michigan University's Emily Renfrew, left, breaks toward the goal as Indianapolis' Riley McClure defends in the first half of their GLIAC lacrosse game played at the Superior Dome in Marquette on April 18, 2019. (Photo courtesy Daryl T. Jarvinen)

Not surprisingly, NMU head coach Lindsey LeMay was pleased with how the weekend went.

“I’m feeling pretty good, especially our Friday victory, it just really felt like we dominated for the entire, technically 60 minutes, but it’s always like 2 1/2 hours,” she said in a Monday Zoom interview. “And it was really cool to see just a lot of the things we’ve been working on start to come to fruition.

“I won’t say Sunday was our best performance, but ultimately, the score shows that we were the better team. We suffered an injury on Friday that’s going to be a little taxing for the rest of the season. No. 9, Emily Renfrew, has a sternum injury. So I don’t know what the rest of the season is going to look like for her, but ultimately, we were able to pull through on Sunday and give a great performance. Twenty-five goals is a lot of goals, so I can’t really complain about that.

“Overall, a really good weekend. I’m proud of the team. We surpassed the record for most number of wins in a season by Northern Michigan lacrosse. So they were all pretty happy about that.”

Northern had to deal with an unusual 9 a.m. start on Sunday and LeMay said it might’ve had an effect on her team’s slow start, but they eventually shook off the morning haze and rolled in the second half.

“I can’t lie, it’s hard to wake college kids up early and have them perform to the best of their capacity at 9 a.m., but I think that could be a factor why our second half started to look like our team and our first half was like ‘Uh, what are we doing?,'” she said with a laugh. “It actually was kind of funny the way that worked, but I do think that I will try to never play another game at 9 a.m.

“But ultimately, it was a good test of toughness because it’s not like Ashland didn’t have to wake up at 9 a.m. So ultimately, they woke up eventually and started playing well. So it was a good test. I don’t want to do it again, though.”

NMU will have its last two home games of the regular season this weekend when they take on GLIAC second-place Grand Valley State (6-1, 3-0) on Friday and Sunday before heading downstate the following weekend to play at Davenport (6-1, 2-1).

The Lakers are a traditional powerhouse, so LeMay knows the ‘Cats have their work cut out for them this weekend.

“Grand Valley is a very good program,” she said. “They’ve been around for a long time, since I was in high school, and they are ranked No. 7 in the country right now. But I do think they’re not the unstoppable force that they used to be.

“Davenport, who is in our conference too, had them very close to beating them on Saturday … and I think that’s kind of showed our kids that they’re not this unstoppable force.

“So I think we’re entering the week with a little less fear that they’ve normally had when talking about Grand Valley and that’s something that I’ve been working with anyways because they’re all just D-2 lacrosse players, they’re not that scary.

“I think that while they’re going to be good and they do have a huge roster, I think that we’re closer to them than we have been in the past. But they do play very fluid, traditional, real offense, real defense, lots of midfield lines lacrosse. Like they are stacked at every position and they’re well coached. So I think Grand Valley will put on a good show for the rest of the season. They’ve been very good.”

Some coaches might want to face some easier opponents to end the regular season, but LeMay says she likes playing quality teams such as GVSU and Davenport.

“So we play Davenport after Grand Valley and I like playing the best team and then we’re going to play the team that we’re tied for second-best with,” she said. “And I think that if we play well against Grand Valley, no matter how it goes, it puts us in the right place to be as competitive as possible with Davenport.

“And right now from what I’ve kind of started to figure out about the (GLIAC) tournament, there’s kind of no way we don’t play Davenport in the tournament the first round. So we’re probably playing them three games in a row.

“I think playing Grand Valley first, having this very difficult game set and then moving into what should be an even match, but a very good battle for three games in a row, I think it’ll set us up better than it would’ve if we would’ve played Grand Valley this week and Ashland next week.

“Just because you’re coming off a game where maybe you didn’t have to like, give your entire soul to stay close. So I’m hoping it sets us up better, but we’ll see.”

Friday’s start against the Lakers is at 6 p.m. and Sunday’s at noon in the Superior Dome.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.