The women's lacrosse team was unable to gain a berth to the NCAA tournament on Sunday, falling to the Colgate Red Raiders 13-8 in the Patriot League championship game held on Jacobs Field. The Eagles had defeated the Navy Midshipmen 17-15 in the semifinals Friday afternoon.
The Eagles found themselves down early as Colgate went on a one-minute-long 4-0 scoring run and took a commanding lead five minutes into the match.
Senior attacker Lauren Lane broke the scoring drought for the Eagles by tallying the only goal of the game at the 23:18 mark to put the score at 4-1. AU went on a scoring run of their own, tallying four goals in a row to tie the game at four points each at the 18:38 mark of the first half.
The Eagles and the Red Raiders traded goals during the final fifteen minutes of the half, with AU's freshman midfielder Brit Ferguson and junior attacker Gina Ibello scoring their second goals of the match to take the teams into the half tied at seven points each.
As even as the first half of play was between the two teams, it was all Colgate in the second half.
The Red Raiders took the lead at the 25:28 mark of the half and never looked back. Colgate scored six straight goals over the first 20 minutes of the half, taking a strong 13-7 lead with less than four minutes remaining.
Senior attacker Jackie Lane scored her last goal in her AU career with one minute to play to cut the lead to 13-8 but it was not enough to rally the Eagles as they eventually lost by the same score.
Colgate's Molly Carroll, the tournament MVP, led all scorers with three goals in the match while Jackie Lane and Ibello scored twice for AU.
In order to reach the finals, the Eagles needed a dramatic come-from-behind win over Navy in the league semifinals, scoring seven goals over the final ten minutes to take a 17-15 victory.
Down 15-10 with just under ten minutes remaining in the match, senior Lauren Aksionoff scored her second goal of the game to cut the lead down to four.
The Lane sisters scored back-to-back goals within one minute of each other to put the lead down to two at 15-13.
Aksionoff completed her hat-trick to cut the deficit to one at the 5:25 mark before goals by Finnegan and the game winner by Ibello put the Eagles in front for good.
The loss in the championship final ends the season for the Patriot League regular season champions with a 6-2 record in the PL and an 8-10 overall record.
