Senior defender Lindsay Rogers will have season-ending knee surgery, effectively ending her Syracuse lacrosse career and leaving a significant hole in the No. 9 Orange’s defense.

After suffering the injury in SU’s loss to No. 1 Northwestern March 21, the co-captain missed the next two games. In her absence, the results have been mixed on the field. The Orange (5-3, 1-0 Big East) was pummeled by No. 8 Dartmouth (6-1), 17-10, March 24 but then showed resilience in a 17-10 victory against Rutgers (6-3, 0-2) Sunday.

Rogers’ injury was confirmed by head coach Gary Gait this week. Syracuse will play without Rogers again at No. 17 Boston University (5-5) Saturday at 1 p.m.

With Rogers confirmed to be out for the long haul, Gait has been working on making adjustments to his defensive scheme. Rogers was the most potent defensive player on the field, and the Orange will have to quickly learn how to make up for her loss.

‘It’s just a matter of developing the communication skills,’ Gait said. ‘Junior goalkeeper Liz Hogan will have to step up as more of a vocal leader on defense. Lindsay really quarterbacked the defense, so now we’re going to find other people to quarterback. Maybe it’s not just Liz but (senior defender) Eileen (Finn) and a couple of other players that will need to step up verbally and help that communication level so that we can play better team defense.’

In the two games that Rogers has missed, there has been no concrete replacement for her. Instead, Gait has rotated in various players to attempt to fill the void left by the senior. One of those players is junior midfielder Catherine Rodriguez. Rodriguez had not seen much playing time this year before starting against both Dartmouth and Rutgers this past week.

But that is a perfect example of how Gait is going to attempt to deal with a Lindsay Rogers-less team. He knows that there is not one player who can replace her, so he’ll focus on utilizing numerous players from a roster that is stacked with defenders.

Finn and senior midfielder Sarah Sedgwick will now be given more responsibility to cause turnovers and keep opponents out of the goal, but they will certainly need some help from their teammates.

And whether those teammates will be able to respond to the challenge is yet to be determined.

‘Obviously, Lindsay is a huge part of our team,’ Finn said. ‘She’s pretty much the heart of our team, so it’s definitely different not having her on the field. But I think we have a deep defense. We have a lot of talented girls. We’ll just have a different group out there on the field.’

With Big East play having just started and a three-game road trip set to begin on Saturday against the Terriers, the Orange will have to learn to adapt without Rogers sooner than later. In this critical part of its season, with three losses under its belt already, SU can’t afford many more missteps along the way.

If Sunday’s performance is any kind of indication of how Syracuse will respond to this injury, there is reason to believe. The Orange defense did a solid job of keeping Rutgers out of its zone, thus allowing SU’s dynamic offense to dominate.

‘We had some time to make adjustments after losing Lindsay Rogers, so that helped,’ Gait said in response to Sunday’s effort. ‘But I think we were still working on it and trying to gel our defense without Lindsay. And that’s going to be a tough task to really bring it back to where we though we were during the Northwestern game.’

With the news that Rogers is officially done for the season, a brand-new campaign for the Orange begins this weekend. This past week Syracuse played in the hopes that Rogers would recover shortly and help the team in the home stretch of its schedule. That hope has now dissipated.

Though Finn and Sedgewick know that a formidable task looms over their heads and that it won’t be easy, they do believe that this defense can be effective enough to win.

‘All of us, especially the seniors, are going to have to step it up and really play off of each other and communicate,’ Sedgwick said. ‘We have such a big defense and we’re all going to try to fill the role together. We’re lucky because we have a lot of girls. It’s a big role to fill, but I think we’ll be able to do it.’

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Published on April 1, 2010 at 12:00 pm