FARMINGTON HILLS — Of all the senior athlete banners lining the fence outside Farmington Hills Mercy's lacrosse field, one seems to stand out from the crowd.
Instead of smiling, pointing at the camera or winding up for a shot, Mackenzie Conway is gnawing on her goalie stick.
“My swim photo was nice and professional, and I wanted this one to be a little bit silly, and show my personality a bit more,” she said.
Conway, a three-time team captain, is also a two-time All-Catholic player, a first-team all-state player, and a 2024 USA Lacrosse All-American who will continue her career next year at an Ivy League school, Brown University.
Silly or not, Conway is a big reason why the Marlins stand 10-0-0 this spring, and the teeth marks on her stick indicate the team is hungry for more.
“We have a lot of built-up — I wouldn’t say anger — but drive,” she said. “The last three seasons we’ve lost in the playoffs and we’ve done a great job of getting to where we have been, but I think this team is special this year. We are a family. Honestly, it’s different this year. But 10-0 doesn’t mean much. A record’s a record, but at the end of the day, we want something bigger.”
Mercy won the Catholic League’s Bishop Division girls lacrosse championship in 2024 and 2022, and clinched the Central Division’s regular-season title with Monday’s closely contested 8-7 win over Toledo St. Ursula Academy.
“This season a lot of our work has to do with grit, and our team emphasized that the whole game,” Conway said. “We knew it was going to be a tough second-half game against a very good team. It came down to grit and possession, and the way we were playing in the last few minutes.”
“We closed stronger,” Marlins head coach Steve Schimpke said. “Our defense played tough and our goalie made big saves down the stretch, and it was enough to win the game.”
Although St. Ursula scored the first goal five minutes into the match, Mercy took the lead less than 90 seconds later and never trailed thereafter, although the Arrows came back to knot the score at 3 to end the first quarter, and 7 by the end of the third.
Mercy got the eventual game-winning goal with 10:49 to play. Senior Olivia Lorelli fed the ball from behind the goal to classmate Alison Smiley, who one-timed it past the St. Ursula keeper.
“Yeah, that was a great team to play against,” said Smiley, a two-year team captain who’s committed to the University of Detroit Mercy. “But we’ve put in a lot of hard work so far, we just want to keep pushing on our foundation of hard work. Now that we’re going into Catholic League playoffs, more hard work and dedication to our goals will get us there.”
After breaking the 7-7 tie, the Marlins possessed the ball for much of the remaining time with a deliberate offense, although they could never pad the lead. St. Ursula had several good opportunities to tie the game with an offensive rush in the final minute of play, but Conway made three point-blank saves to preserve the win for Mercy.
“Every game I’m going to get shots (at me), but it comes down to our defense, and how they force bad shots,” she said. “I think our defense did a very good job, especially getting their sticks on their hips and forcing bad shots at bad angles to allow me to save the ball.”
And although it won’t show up on the stat sheet, Conway made a key play after that third save by rushing behind the net and diving toward the back line. Although she didn’t come up with the loose ball, she allowed the Marlins to reclaim possession since she was the closest player to the ball once it traveled out of bounds. From there, Mercy was able to play out the remaining 47 seconds and preserve the win.
“I’ve done it a few times this season,” she said. “Again, that’s grit. It just comes down to who gets that ball, and I knew we didn’t have that much time on the clock, and if I didn’t lay out for that ball, I probably wouldn’t have got (possession). I put it on the line for my team.”
“She’s an incredible athlete, and she makes big plays like that all the time,” Schimpke said. “We expected a tight game. They have some really, really good players, and they’re a well-coached team. We’re happy we finished. We might have been a bit rusty coming back from (Easter) vacation, but we’ll take this one.”
Schimpke said the Catholic League schedule has been “really competitive” this spring. With one league game remaining, the Marlins are 4-0-0, two games ahead of St. Ursula, Marian, and Cranbrook, each of whom sport 2-2-0 records.
“I expected us to win games, for sure,” Schimpke said. “Our goal this year is to win championships. We have the Catholic League (title) to go after, and then we have a state (title) to go after. The regular-season games are good; they build momentum, but you don’t get trophies for them.”
“I think our goal is to make it to the finals and win, and build off of last year when we lost in the (state) semi-finals,” Lorelli said. “We want to take a step further and go past that. We don’t want to come up short this year.”
“Mercy’s always an underdog,” Conway added, “but we’re the real deal.”
