Video Tribute: The CMS Women's Lacrosse Class of 2021

As part of NCAA Division III week (Apr. 5-11), we will be honoring the senior classes for all 21 of our varsity sports. A number of our student-athletes elected to take a semester or a school year off and could return to action next season, but we have chosen to honor the senior classes as they would have been, without the COVID-19 interruption. The members of the Class of 2021 lost so much of what they had built towards in their first 2-3 years of competition when the pandemic hit, but still clearly left their mark on CMS Athletics.

CLAREMONT, Calif. - The CMS Women's Lacrosse Class of 2021 accomplished as much in two seasons as many student-athletes hope to do in four. They helped the Athenas sweep two straight SCIAC regular season and postseason championships and earned back-to-back NCAA Division III Tournament bids in their first two years.

Over their playing careers, the seniors on the 2021 women's lacrosse team helped the Athenas compile a 29-1 SCIAC record and a 39-6 overall mark. CMS rolled to two straight undefeated league titles, and then captured two SCIAC Tournament championships on its home field with 17-5 and 15-3 wins over Pomona-Pitzer, respectively. 

The members of the Class of 2021 lost their first collegiate game to UC Davis, and then won 18 games in a row before falling in the NCAA Tournament. Their only losses as sophomores in a 16-3 season came to traditional powers Williams, Amherst and Colorado College.  



The six members of the CMS Women's Lacrosse Class of 2021 are as follows: 

Sally Abel (Attack, Piedmont, Calif. - CMC, Media Studies)
In just a little over two seasons, Abel moved into ninth place in program history in career goals scored with 113, and was on her way to climbing higher and higher up that list over her junior and senior years. She earned first-team All-SCIAC honors both seasons, and improved from second-team All-West as a first-year to earning first-team honors as a sophomore. In 2019, she had 51 goals on the year, and earned SCIAC Offensive Player of the Week honors for her opening-week performance in wins over Whittier and Redlands. A media studies major at Claremont McKenna, Abel studied abroad in Granada, Spain during the 2019 fall semester and served as a client account intern at Eleven, Inc., an ad agency in San Francisco, in the summer of 2020.

Taylor Geary (Midfield, Orinda, Calif. - CMC, Government/Leadership)
Geary was returning to the Athenas this spring after studying abroad as a junior at the University of St. Andrews. She played in 13 games as a sophomore in 2019, scoring four goals, with one of them coming in a SCIAC Championship game win over Pomona-Pitzer. A government and leadership major at Claremont McKenna, Geary has worked as a research assistant at the Kravis Leadership Institute throughout her collegiate career, while also serving as an Outreach Coordinator for the student chapter of Doctors Without Borders. She served an internship in the summer of 2019 as a pediatric nurse with the Cambodian Community Dream Organization, and has taken pre-nursing courses online through the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.  

Anna Gillespie (Goalie, Encinitas, Calif. - Scripps, EEP)
Gillespie earned Second-Team All-SCIAC honors as a first-year goalie in 2018, helping CMS to an 18-game winning streak and an NCAA Tournament bid, while leading the league in goals against average (6.56). As as sophomore, her GAA remained a stingy 6.35, including only three goals while making seven saves in the SCIAC Championship game win over Pomona-Pitzer and a complete-game shutout against Baldwin Wallace. In only two seasons, she moved into fifth place in CMS history in career saves (158). An environment, economics and politics major at Scripps, Gillespie has interned in Washington, D.C. in 2019 with Scott Peters in the U.S. House of Representatives, and also interned for his re-election campaign in 2020. Her senior thesis at Scripps was studying the impact of professional sports on the environment, focusing on air quality in cities that acquired an NBA team since 1980. 

Brielle Huddy (Attack, Moorestown. N.J. - CMC, Neuroscience)
Huddy appeared in 15 games in her shortened CMS Lacrosse career, earning one start as a first-year in 2018. She scored goals in back-to-back wins over Oberlin and Whittier as a sophomore, and added a goal in a win over Pomona-Pitzer in her rookie campaign. She also recorded two ground balls in a game three times, including league wins over Whittier and Chapman. A neuroscience major at Claremont McKenna, Huddy has earned SCIAC All-Academic Team honors and plans to attend medical school after working on campus at the Keck Science Center. Her neuroscience senior thesis was titled Understanding Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and the use of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) as a potential pharmacological treatment.

Julia Mueller (Attack, Lafayette, Calif. - Scripps, Media Studies)
Mueller compiled 29 goals at the approximate midpoint of her collegiate career, including 15 goals and five assists as a sophomore in 2019 to help the Athenas to a SCIAC title. She had five multi-goal games in 2019, including a two-goal, one-assist effort in the SCIAC Championship game against Pomona-Pitzer. She also had a hat trick at Redlands, and had two goals and an assist in SCIAC wins over Whittier and Chapman.  As a first-year, she had a goal in the SCIAC Championship and scored twice in a defeat to Colorado College in the NCAA Tournament. A communication and media studies major at Scripps, she has been a SCIAC All-Academic Team selection, has worked for the CMS Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and held a media and marketing internship with Bluedrop Water in Boston last summer. 

Eloise Shields (Attack, Ipswich, Mass. - Scripps, Media Studies)
Shields had a strong impact on the CMS attack in her career, particularly as a feeder, averaging nearly an assist per game over her last two seasons (12 in 15 games in 2019 and 5 in 5 games in 2020). She had a big postseason in 2019 as a sophomore, contributing three assists in a SCIAC Semifinal win over Chapman, scoring twice in the SCIAC Championship against Pomona-Pitzer, and then adding another assist in the NCAA Tournament against Amherst. She had four games in her career with three or more points, and two games with two points in her abbreviated junior season. A SCIAC All-Academic Team selection as a media studies major at Scripps, Shields is currently interning with CLD PR in Los Angeles, managing celebrity accounts and optimizing public relations through social media management, and studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain in 2019 while working as an English tutor.