WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - In another rain-soaked weekend affair, the Manhattanville College women's lacrosse team got back into the win column with a 12-5 win over King's (Pa.), Saturday afternoon at Robert L. Betzler Athletic Complex. With the win, the Valiants move to 2-4 in their second to last tune-up game before conference play begins.
Colleen MacNeil (Mahopac, N.Y./Mahopac) pieced together her best offensive performance dawning the Valiant colors, with a season-high five goals on eight shots. The senior leads the Valiant offensive output on the season with 17 goals and 25 points through six games.
Pietra Cabral (Mineola, N.Y./Mineola) and Gianna Mott (Ronkonkoma, N.Y./Sachem North) rounded out the goal column for Manhattanville, with three each, as Cabral added two assists for a five-point outing. Kaci Pierce (Niantic, Conn./East Lyme) concluded the scoring for the Valiants with a goal of her own, for her twelfth tally of the season.
MacNeil would also pace the team in draw controls, with nine on the day, adding on ten ground balls and five caused turnovers. Catrina Chinetti (Hyde Park, Mass./Boston Latin Academy) followed suit with six ground balls, as Sydney Natale (Greenwich, Conn./Greenwich) and Cabral both snatched two ground balls each.
King's opened up the scoring after forcing two turnovers, leading to the Monarchs gaining possession in the offensive zone and capitalizing off the miscues to score two minutes into the contest, taking the 1-0 lead. Manhattanville would swiftly strike back with MacNeil's first on the day, shortly after getting her second to give the Valiants the 2-1 lead. Manhattanville would prove to never surrender the lead back to their counterparts, using a Mott goal to push their margin even further. The Monarchs would slice into the lead built by the Valiants using a Man-Up advantage off the stick of Emilee Schultz to pin the contest at 3-2.
The Valiants would score seven straight goals in the second and third quarters, with Pierce sparking the scoring run with a Man-Down goal, as Cabral, MacNeil and Mott all found the back netting twice over the next twenty minutes of game time. King's would end their scoring drought with twenty ticks left in the third quarter, as Kyleigh Dunworth found the net to put the score at 10-3 in the Valiants' favor going into the final stanza.
The Monarchs would open the final fifteen minutes of play with two quick goals, from Olivia Benner and Maria Schneider, with the latter coming from a Man-Up advantage. Manhattanville quickly responded with two goals of their own from Cabral and MacNeil to see the final score sit at 12-5 for the Valiants.
Jacee Russello (Hope Valley, R.I./North Kingstown Senior) collected the win with one save in the 50:48 spent between the pipes, with Paz Hassan-Contreras (Lansing, Mich./Okemos) relieving her in the fourth to make way for her colligate lacrosse debut, spending 9:12 in the crease for the Valiants.
Up Next
The Valiants travel to Mahwah, N.J., taking on the Roadrunners for their final tune-up before conference play.
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