“Lauren and Alli will be missed,” Austin said. “But we do have a lot of strong people coming back. I think we’re building. Having a full-time assistant coach this year definitely helped. We have a strong junior class. It’ll be up to them to lead and put it all together, especially on the attack.”

Harvard does have one final non-conference game next Sunday against No. 1 Maryland, the six-time defending national champion in women’s lacrosse. Harvard defeated Maryland, 8-7, in the grand finale of its 1990 national championship season. The two programs have diverged since then, but they continue to meet every year.

“Most of all, we want to go out and have fun and play with them,” Austin said. “It’s amazing to still have the opportunity to play them and keep them on our schedule, because they’re a great team.”

Maryland beat the Crimson, 21-8, last season, and by the score of 21-3 the year before that. The Crimson expects a more respectable result this time around, seeing as Harvard kept close with Princeton in a 14-9 defeat this season, and the Terrapins beat Princeton by just one goal last week.

The game will be played at Jordan Field on Sunday at 1 p.m. The Crimson should be the better-rested team, as Maryland faces a tough test at Dartmouth on Friday night. Harvard is the last team that the Terrapins will face before they begin their run for a seventh consecutive NCAA title.