The women's lacrosse team dropped its fifth game in a row, losing on the road to the Richmond Spiders 20-12 yesterday afternoon.
The loss drops the Eagles' record to 5-9 on the season.
AU found itself in a quick deficit that it could not dig itself out of all game. The Spiders scored the first goal less than two minutes into the game, part of an early 3-0 scoring run that found AU down by three only five minutes into match.
Junior attacker Kira Sonberg scored the first AU goal at the 24:30 mark to cut the deficit to 3-1, but another Richmond scoring run would push the gap to 7-1 midway through the half. Back-to-back goals by freshman midfielder Brit Ferguson and sophomore attacker Lisa Schaff dropped Richmond's lead to 7-3 at the 11:54 mark, but it's close as the Eagles come for the rest of the game.
The Spiders outscored the Eagles 5-2 over the rest of the opening period to take a commanding 12-5 lead into halftime.
As the second half commenced, the Spiders continued its strong momentum. Another 3-0 scoring run by Richmond pushed the lead to 16-5, its largest lead of the game with 26:55 remaining.
The two teams actually scored the same amount of goals in the second half, seven, thanks to a 3-0 scoring run for the Eagles. Senior attacker Jackie Lane scored back-to-back goals of her own during this stretch, while Sonberg tallied her second goal of the match. However, it was not enough to bring the Eagles back into the game.
Claire Cunniff scored a game-high five goals on the afternoon, while teammate Mandy Friend scored four of her own. Lane was the high scorer for the Eagles, taking home three goals in the match, while Ferguson, Sonberg and senior attacker Lauren Aksionoff also had multi-goal efforts.
The Eagles will conclude its season-long five-game road trip against Holy Cross on Sunday before returning home to Jacobs Field for the season finale against on April 19.
