Explosive and unstoppable offense by the Loyola women’s lacrosse team contributed to its dominant first Patriot League victory of the 2015 season on Saturday afternoon at Ridley. The No. 16 Greyhounds started league play with a 16-6 win against Lafayette.
Loyola’s sixteen goals were part of an evenly spread offense, as a season-high nine Greyhounds scored.
Senior Annie Thomas led all players with six points on two goals and four assists, while classmate Kara Burke achieved her third hat trick of the season, tacking on three goals and one assist. Seniors Molly Hulseman, Sydney Thomas, Hannah Schmitt and Taryn VanThof all added two goals, and junior Shannon Aikens and sophomores Bailey Mathias and Cami Whiteword each tacked on one goal.
Lafayette sophomore Kirsten Wilhelmsen had two goals and one assist.
It only took Thomas 16 seconds to score the first goal of the game and then assist Hulseman with 25 minutes remaining in the first half to give Loyola the quick 2-0 advantage.
Mathis got her first career goal, assisted by Burke at 20:59, Annie Thomas found Hulseman again at 20:14 and found Burke for another goal at 16:49. Sydney Thomas added a sixth Loyola goal with an assist from Hulseman at 10:55.
Lafayette got on the board with 5:05 remaining in the first half on a goal from sophomore Maggie Carver. Nine seconds later, VanThof answered back with a goal of her own to extend the Loyola lead to 7-1. Lafayette would score one more goal before the halftime break, and junior Melissa Galione scored with an assist from Carver at 4:38. But it was Loyola who capped off the first-half scoring with a goal from Burke at 1:24.
Hannah Schmitt’s first goal of the game started the second half, scoring at the 27:53 mark.
Lafayette’s first goal of the half came at 23:47, before the Greyhounds strung together five straight scores over a 10-minute span to take a 14-3 lead.
Three straight Leopard goals moved the score to 14-6, before VanThof and Annie Thomas closed out the game with a pair of goals at the 1:17 and 36-second marks, with Thomas’ goal being assisted by freshman Frankie Kamely for her first career point.
Defensively, sophomore goalkeeper Molly Wolf stopped seven shots while giving up just four goals in 51 minutes of action. She also added three ground balls and two caused turnovers, while sophomore Taylor Caldwell took over in goal, playing the remaining nine minutes and stopping two shots.
VanThof finished the game with four ground balls, three draw controls and three caused turnovers, while sophomore Maddy Lesher added three ground balls and one caused turnover.
Loyola led the way in shots, 30-21 and ground balls, 16-14. The teams were deadlocked at 12-12 in draw controls and Loyola converted on 17 of its 21 clears compared to 11-of-12 for the Leopards.
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