ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The Roberts Wesleyan University women's lacrosse team is headed back to the East Coast Conference Championship finals.
Freshman goalie
Josella Harrison made 11 saves and the second-seeded Redhawks scored six consecutive goals in just over 11 minutes bridging the third and fourth quarters to pull away and defeat third-seeded Daemen 15-9 in the ECC Semifinals Wednesday evening.
Roberts (7-8) has won four consecutive games and will play at top-seeded Mercy on Saturday at a time to be announced.
"Our defense was solid," Roberts coach
Ellen Newton said. "Allie Clahane and
Lia MacDougall forced a bunch of turnovers and Josella played great and made several point-blank saves. It was really a matter of our offense and defense coming together and playing well."
Roberts jumped to a 3-0 advantage after the first quarter and led 8-4 at the half before Daemen (9-6) staged a third-quarter rally and cut its gap to 9-7 with 1:33 remaining in the third.
MacDougall, who led the Redhawks with six goals, regathered the momentum for Roberts by scoring twice within a minute, notching goals with 36 seconds left in the third and 25 seconds into the fourth.
Senior
Kadie Tierney scored just over a minute later and sophomore
Hannah Sparks added a pair of player-up goals to extend the Roberts lead to 14-7 with 6:15 left. MacDougall capped the run off a feed from freshman
Erica Savage to make it 15-7 with 4:35 to play.
MacDougall finished with six goals, one assist, five ground balls and five caused turnovers despite leaving the game for a few minutes in the fourth quarter with an injury.
Tierney added three goals and three assists and freshman
Brooke Guelli scored three goals and added two assists.
Senior
Ella Dossier registered a goal and three assists and moved into fourth place on Roberts' all-time scoring list with 209 career points. Sparks finished with two goals and has scored all six of her goals this season in the past three games.
Clahane caused six turnovers and scooped four ground balls and junior
Alison Dioguardi earned four draw controls.
Harrison, who is in her first season as a goalie after being a field player in high school, made eight saves in the first half. She had 23 saves in two games against the Wildcats this season.
This marks the Redhawks' fifth trip to the ECC title game in the past six seasons, but this is the first time advancing under the direction of Newton, who took over the program last December.
Roberts and Mercy have met in the final four times since 2021 with Roberts capturing ECC titles in 2021 and 2024.
Roberts has shown steady improvement throughout the season and has now won six of its past seven games.
"Honestly, just believing in ourselves," Newton said while discussing the keys to the Redhawks' recent success. "Our team puts in a ton of work outside of practice and they really came on in the second half of the season and that is a credit to them."
