HAVERFORD, PA. - The Ursinus College women's lacrosse team fell behind early and were unable to make up a 9-3 deficit at halftime, as the #22 ranked Haverford earned their seventh consecutive Centennial Conference victory, 16-5.
With the loss, the Bears fell to 7-9 overall and 2-6 in conference action. Meanwhile, the Fords improved to 12-3 and 7-1 in Centennial Conference play.
Haverford jumped out to an early 5-0 lead in the first period before Maeve Leonzi scored at the 4:07 mark for her 40th goal of the season. The Fords used goals from Callie Crawford, Jordan Denaver, Sam Silverman, and Katharine Ference in the first period and held a 5-1 advantage at the end of the first period.
Ursinus won the opening draw of the second period and scored just 40 seconds later after Leonzi found Reilly Morgan cutting too the net to make the score 5-2. The Fords responded with a 3-0 run over the next eight minutes and stretched their lead to 8-2 at the 6:37 mark of the second period. Next, on a failed clear attempt from the Bears, Haverford made the score 9-2 after a goal from Crawford with 1:25 to play in the half. With 41 seconds to play in the half, Gabrielle Liott used a beautiful spin move to create space and used a bounce shot past the Haverford goalkeeper to make the score 9-3 heading into halftime.
In the second half, the Fords used back-to-back goals from Denaver and Roma Hladky to stretch their lead to 11-3 with 9:24 to play in the period. Senior Tori Rubin cut the deficit to seven after she scored on a pass from Leonzi at the 8:01 mark. Haverford closed out the third period on a 3-0 run and controlled a 14-4 lead heading into the final period.
In the fourth period, Andrea Hook was able to sneak a shot past the goalkeeper for her 13th goal of the season. Junior Alexa Machado earned 10 saves in net for the Bears over the full 60 minutes of action. Haverford held a slight 12-11 edge in draw controls while outshooting the Bears 34-18 in the contest.
The Bears will look to bounce back on Saturday as they return to Patterson Field for season finale against #6 Gettysburg at 3pm.