COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – The Ursinus College field hockey team won its tenth Centennial Conference Championship on Sunday, as the Bears (16-3) defeated the Franklin & Marshall Diplomats (17-2) 2-1 in the conference title game.

Ursinus will now advance to the NCAA tournament for the second straight year, and will learn when and where they will play late Sunday night.

After scoring two goals in the first half, and allowing one goal just under three minutes before halftime, the Bears turned up the defense in the final half. Despite being outshot 15-8, the Bears got eight saves from junior goalkeeper Danielle DeSpirito. DeSpirito was named as the tournament MVP, as she allowed just one goal in two games of the tournament.

All of the scoring took place in the first 32 minutes of the game. Ursinus got on the board at 6:03 when junior Megan Keenan scored on a corner off of passes by juniors Kelsey Reed and Danielle Stong.

Samantha Macchio scored at 21:52 when she punched one past Diplomats goalkeeper Allie Morey off of a rebound.

The Diplomats cut the deficit in half at 2-1 when Tamara Mills scored on a deflection off of a cross from Maria Guarisco.

In the second half, F&M got three shots on goal in the first nine minutes with one saved by DeSpirito and two of them went wide.

The Diplomats got their best chance at 52:44 when a shot by Sydney Cole was saved by DeSpirito, and a second shot four seconds later by Guarisco was stopped at the line by sophoomre Aliki Torrence.

From there, the next four shots on goal by F&M were all stopped by DeSpirito. The Diplomats in the final 3:25 pulled their goalkeeper for an extra attacker but did not get a shot off.

Guarisco finished with six shots on the day for F&M, with Keenan finishing with three shots for the Bears.