A year after taking a backseat to Katherine Gjertsen in their senior year at New Trier, Isabelle Sennett was looking to go out and make a name for herself during her freshman
year on Amherst College’s women’s lacrosse team.

And make a name for herself she did.

Despite starting in only nine of the 18 games she played in, Sennett finished second on the team with 32 goals.

“That was definitely a lot different,” she said. “I think in high school Gjertsen and I played really well together, and I really like to set her up and she sort of had the firepower to get it in. Once I got to college, I looked over the team the year before and tried to figure out what role I could play that would be important to the team in order to get them farther.

“I spent a lot of time in the fall sort of getting my shot down and trying to just take those risky shots that are definitely lower percentage, but someone sort of has to take those risks in order to get a team up ahead. So, I decided to take on that role and then throughout the season I really tried to develop my scoring ability in order to help that.”

Sennett’s numbers would have most likely been better if she hadn’t suffered a concussion during the Mammoths’ second game of their spring break road trip to Disney’s ESPN Wide World of sports Complex in Orlando.

The concussion happened against Fairleigh Dickinson-Florham when Sennett was making a cut toward the goal when the player in front of her fell and the player behind her pushed her over the fallen player, causing Sennett to hit her head on the ground.

Luckily for the Wilmette native, the team came back from its trip with a couple days before classes resumed, so she was able to recover slowly. The NCAA has a five-day protocol for
concussions. So there is a day of working out, a day of starting to do drills, a day of non-contact practices, a day of full-contact, and then a game day.

After missing two home games, the sophomore was back on the field against one of Amherst’s biggest rivals, Middlebury.

“I definitely was a little tentative,” she said. “I actually got hit in the head in high school. I didn’t end up getting a concussion, but I got eight stitches across my head from a stick check. I remember from that, me coming into games and just being a little bit more worried around sticks and a little more worried about getting hit in the head.

“Overall, it was a scary experience just because it was one of my first bigger injuries. I think that was the hardest part of all of it was coming back, the team sort of molded around me being gone, and filled all those spots. So I had to work really hard in order to prove myself and get back on the field.”

The Mammoths finished 17-3 overall, losing just once in the regular season, to Middlebury College, and then dropping a conference tournament semifinal to Bowdoin College. The team earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, its 13th bid in school history.

Amherst has had considerable success in the NCAA Tournament, making it to at least the quarterfinal round in nine of the 13 NCAA Tournaments, including this season.

The team made it to the quarterfinals in 2018, dropping a 13-10 decision to Gettysburg College, who would go on to win the NCAA Division III national championship.

Despite it only being August, Sennett and her teammates have their eyes set on the 2019 season.

“I think all of us are prepared to win an NCAA Championship,” she said. “We have already started training. We have all these accountability groups, so there’s a bunch of teams broken up within our team and we send in pictures of us working out every day to hold each other accountable and make sure we’re doing what we need to in the offseason.

“We’re only losing five seniors, two who had knee injuries. So we’re only losing three players who were even playing last season. Two of them made some big contributions, so those will be big shoes to fill. But I think our team can handle that. We have a lot of young talent coming in. I know there’s almost like eight or nine recruits, so I think we’ll be able to fill that role and really get ourselves to be at that next level.”