ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Concordia-St. Paul women's lacrosse team (7-5, 3-1 GLIAC) earned a big GLIAC win 13-9 over the Wildcats of Northern Michigan on Saturday afternoon inside the Concordia Dome led by a strong team effort.
Susie Monson highlighted the day for the Golden Bears for yet another time, tallying her fifth game of the season with at least three goals scored. Adding to her impeccable day was eight draw controls and two caused turnovers.
Freshman goalkeeper Katie Colleran continued her strong play making 11 saves in the win to bring her season total to 64 saves and marked her second consecutive game with single-digit goals allowed on 20 plus shots faced.
Anna Fisher recorded her eighth game of the season with a hat-trick including her third straight to ignite the Golden Bears offense.
The Navy and Gold got off to a fast start scoring the first goal of the day just over two minutes into the game to take the early 1-0 lead to which they quickly added on to less than a minute later. The back-to-back-goals marked Monson and Fisher's first of the day.
Josie Lakosky got the Wildcats on the board just about three minutes later with her first of four goals of the day.
Another pair of back-to-back goals from Monson and Fisher extended the Golden Bears lead 4-1. A quick response from Northern Michigan cut into the lead.
With just 38 seconds on the clock in the first quarter Kayleigh Nelson scored her eighth goal of the season to end the first in favor of Concordia 5-2.
The second quarter was all Wildcats, scoring four of the five goals to tie the game for the first time of the game with five minutes left in the quarter.
The singular Golden Bears goal came from Fisher with just under a minute to play to give the Navy and Gold the lead back up 6-5. With just milliseconds on the clock NMU was able to sneak one in the net to send the game to halftime even 6-6.
The Wildcats showed a surge to start the second half, coming out with a pair of back-to-back free-position goals to earn their first lead of the game.
This didn't faze the Navy and Gold, Morgan Haapala scored her fourth goal of the season to end the Wildcats scoring run. Three minutes later Cayla Jungwirth scored her first goal of the season to tie the game for the third time.
A pair of goals from Monson including a last second score gave the Golden Bears the lead back and allowed them to end the third quarter up 10-8.
Monson continued her scoring run right away in the final quarter, just 13 seconds into the quarter she scored what was the fifth straight goal for CSP to extend the lead to its largest of the day.
The dynamic Golden Bear offense just showed no signs of slowing down, Kaysawn Carlson scored her fifth goal of the season a minute and a half later to mark the sixth unanswered goal.
A single-goal response would not be enough for the Wildcats to regain any type of lead.
Jungwirth scored the dagger with just under 10 minutes to play to give Concordia the 13-9 win and mark the Golden Bears first win since 2022 over Northern Michigan.
It was a team effort in the win, ten players recorded at least one ground ball with five players tallying a caused turnover.
Anna Palony and Maddie Westberg each recorded a trio of caused turnovers and ground balls to keep the ball in the hands of the electric CSP offense.
The Golden Bears outshot the Wildcats 33-23 while forcing 21 turnovers.
The Golden Bears will return to action next weekend for a pair of games on the road where they will face the Panthers of Davenport in Grand Rapids, Mich. on Friday and then head to Allendale, Mich. on Sunday to take on No. 19 Grand Valley State.
