By Matt Faulkner
(Hamilton, NY – March 26, 2
013) The Colgate women’s lacrosse team got four goals from Megan Ark off the bench and three others had hat tricks in a 19-8 win over Binghamton on a sunny afternoon at Tyler’s Field.
Colgate (6-5) saw Amanda O’Sullivan, Emily Peebles and Monica White each tallied hat tricks in the win. O’Sullivan, Ark and Brooke Flanagan tied for the team-high in points with four. Flanagan led the way with four helpers on the day. Overall, Colgate had eight different goal scorers as the Raiders tied their season-high for goals in a game, which also happened against Bucknell earlier this season.
Jennie Berglin got the start and made three saves in over 46 minutes of action. Hanna Longwell played extremely well with five saves in 13 minutes of playing time. O’Sullivan had five draw controls and four ground balls, while Jenna Frost had five pick ups and two caused turnovers on defense.
The Bearcats (1-6) was led by Sophie Racciatti, who tallied a hat trick, while Kimberly McGeever and Allie Rodgers each had two goals. Erin McNulty took the loss, but did make nine stops in front of the cage.
Colgate got off to a great start in the first eight minutes and earned a 4-0 lead with two of the goals coming on free-position shots. The goals came from four different players with Kate Sheridan tallying two points on a goal and an assist. O’Sullivan and White tallied the first of their two in the half during the stretch.
Binghamton put their first goal on the board with 18:45 left in the half with Katherine Hunsberger scoring, but then the Raiders went on a 5-0 scoring run to open up their largest lead of the half at 9-1. Sheridan got the run started with her second of the contest with 7:26 remaining and then Ark recorded her first of the game with an assist to O’Sullivan with 6:36 left. Peebles gave the Raiders a 7-1 lead with four minutes left and then O’Sullivan and White closed built it up to 9-1 with 2:23 left in the half. Rodgers stopped the bleeding for the Bearcats late in the opening period and then teams went into the break with Colgate leading 9-2.
The Bearcats came out in the second half and matched Colgate goal-for-goal in the first seven minutes. With the scored at 12-5, Ark and Alison flood tallied back-to-back goals and with 19 minutes left it was 14-5 in favor of the home team.
McGeever got one back for Binghamton, but the Raiders responded with four-consecutive tallies to push the lead up to 18-6 with 13:20 remaining. Kelly Mason recorded her first two-goal game of the season during the run and Lauren Gorajek got in the scoring column as well.
The game was well out of reach as Binghamton added two-straight goals to cut the lead to 18-8, but Ark salted away the win with her fourth tally of the day with 2:03 left in the game.
Colgate had a commanding 39-22 lead in shots and had a 25-12 advantage in ground balls. The Raiders also dominated the draw controls by a 19-10 margin.
Colgate will not see Tyler’s Field for the next three weeks and the road trip starts on Saturday with a visit to Holy Cross in a pivotal Patriot League matchup that will have postseason implications.