WORCESTER, Mass. - Patricia Sutton, Carolyn Smirti and Amy Archambault combined to score 11 goals to lead the Holy Cross women's lacrosse team to the program's first-ever NCAA Tournament with a 14-8 defeat of Le Moyne in an NCAA Play-In game on Saturday afternoon at the John Coughlin Memorial Stadium on the campus of Worcester State College. Le Moyne concludes the season with a program-best 15-4 mark.
The Crusaders, winners of four straight games and nine of their last 12, gain a berth into the 16-team field of the 2006 NCAA Tournament. Sutton and Smirti finished the game with four goals, while Archambault tallied three scores. Sophomore Kristine Corkum added two goals and classmate Cara O'Sullivan scored one. Sutton also had two assists on the day, while sophomore Nikki Bolduc recorded one.
Sutton wasted no time setting the tone of the game, as she scored the first of her four goals just 18 seconds into play, and added another less than five minutes later to give Holy Cross (14-6) a quick 2-0 lead. Corkum and Smirti then scored back-to-back goals in a span of two minutes and 14 seconds for a 4-0 Crusader lead with 19:56 on the clock.
Le Moyne's Whitney Vecchio (Watertown, N.Y./General Brown) put the Dolphins on the board when she took an Amanda Keegan (Marcellus, N.Y./Marcellus) pass and scored at the 17:55 mark, but Corkum responded with her second goal of the game and put the Crusaders back up by four (5-1) when she beat Le Moyne keeper Samantha Falcone (Syracuse, N.Y./West Genesee) with 15:33 remaining in the half.
Keegan made things interesting with a goal just 11 seconds later that cut the lead to three (5-2), but Holy Cross strung together two more goals to take a 7-2 lead at the 9:42 mark. Le Moyne's Liz Hewitt (Liverpool, N.Y./Liverpool) scored with 4:57 left to account for the 7-3 halftime score.
The Crusaders started off the second half strong as well, scoring six straight goals, giving them a comfortable 13-3 lead with 16:18 remaining in the game. Keegan ended the Le Moyne dry spell at the 13:10 mark, which started a 5-1 Dolphin run that cut the deficit to its final margin of six.
Holy Cross goalkeeper Megan Orr had a solid game in net, turning away 14 shots. Falcone made six saves for the Dolphins. The 14 goals against equaled the most allowed in a game by Le Moyne this season. The Dolphins set a program record with 8.53 goals allowed per game in 2006.
Vecchio finished the game with a team-high three goals for Le Moyne. She finished the 2006 season with a program-record 68 points. Keegan added two scores, while Hewitt, Kylie Rosette (Watertown, N.Y./General Brown) and Lisa McCarthy (Syracuse, N.Y./West Genesee) also scored for the Dolphins.
