ST. PAUL, Minn, - The Concordia-St. Paul women's lacrosse team defeated Walsh 15-14 in overtime to win their home-opener at the Concordia Dome on Sunday afternoon in St. Paul, Minn. to start the season 2-0.
With today's win, the Golden Bears are 2-0 for the first time since the start of the 2020 season where they started the season with four straight wins and moved to 6-3 all-time in home-openers.
Sydney Smith highlighted the day, scoring the game-winner for CSP in overtime to mark her first career game-winning goal while also scoring three goals in the win to record her second career hat-trick.
Senior Anna Fisher continued her dominant season scoring her second consecutive hat-trick, while tallying four goals today to bring her season total to 10. She also recorded three draw controls to bring her season total to seven.
Midfielder Susie Monson recorded her first hat-trick of the season to bring her career total to ten. She led the team in draw controls with 10 to bring her season total to 15. Monson recorded two assists on top of her exceptional game to lead the team in points with five.
Junior Kayleigh Nelson saw her best game of her collegiate career, scoring her first hat-trick and tallying one assist to total four points in the game.
The Golden Bears and Cavaliers played a back-and-forth game to consistently keep both teams on their toes and at no time was one team safe from the other's high powered offense. 19 different lead changes were seen in the game with no team leading for more than six minutes.
Walsh was the first to find the net in Sunday's game, scoring two consecutive goals to go up 2-0 early in the first quarter.
Sara Kaiser scored her first goal of the game at 7:52 to get the Golden Bears on the board.
Once again the Cavaliers struck back fast to go up 2-1 to which the Navy and Gold responded with three consecutive goals to take their first lead of the day 4-3 heading into the second quarter.
With no surprise Walsh came back with two more goals of their own to regain the lead 5-4 late in the second quarter.
Smith scored her second goal of the game with the Cavaliers down a player at 4:31 in the second quarter to tie the game for the third time.
The two teams proceeded to exchange leads and both go on consecutive scoring efforts to reach the third quarter with CSP seeing the lead 9-7 before Walsh put up four goals to once again reclaim the lead.
Another pair of goals for the Golden Bears by Smith and Kaiser saw CSP take back the lead 14-13 in the fourth quarter.
With three minutes left to play in regulation the Cavaliers hard fighting offense tied the game for the seventh time.
The Golden Bears scored their final goal of regulation with under two minutes of play left to take the lead 14-13 and set their eyes on the outright win.
Walsh had other plans and forced overtime with 33 seconds left on the clock to grow an already competitive spirit in the Concordia Dome.
With Walsh down a player two minutes into overtime, Smith took control and scored the game-winner off an assist on the fly by Monson.
Once again five Golden Bears found the net with Jenna Hamann tallying two assists.
Meghan McGowan accumulated a team-high five ground balls.
CSP led the game in shots with 33 to Walsh's 23 while also seeing 26 shots on goal to the opponents 19, while also edging out the Cavaliers 18-15 in draw controls and ground balls 17-14.
Marge Lucio started in the net for the Golden Bears, making three saves in the win before Erika Holm entered in the fourth quarter to tally the final two saves in the final seconds to earn the win for the Navy and Gold.
The Cavaliers were led offensively by Rachel Black and Katie Coomes who each scored four goals.
The Golden Bears will return to action this Friday Feb. 21 to take on the Cardinals of William Jewell in the Concordia Dome starting at 6 p.m.
