Women’s lacrosse earns most wins in program history against Gardner-Webb

Photo courtesy of Kennesaw State University Athletics.

Kennesaw State women’s lacrosse cruised their way to a school-record tying eighth win of the season in an 18-10 game against Gardner-Webb University on March 26.

The Owls progressed to an astounding 8-4 record as they finished their non-conference schedule games. KSU has now tied the 2017 (8-9) and the 2019 (8-10) squads in most wins in program history with eight wins.

Aside from being the nation’s leading scorer, senior midfielder Siena Gore has made another huge milestone in her career. Gore made a total of five goals and nine draw controls. Gore also completed four assists that resulted in nine points for KSU.

Gore was not the only Owl setting career records. Senior Chesslyn Lamar scored four goals. Lamar’s four goals set a new career-high for her.

Gardner-Webb led the game early on by scoring the first two goals and ended the first quarter with a 5-4 lead. The Owls began to completely shut down the Running Bulldogs with their defense.

The Running Bulldogs went on to be scoreless for the following 25 minutes due to KSU’s powerhouse defense. Gore tied the game up and led the team on a series of seven unanswered goals. With under a minute left of the third quarter, Gardner-Webb began to close in on the Owls with three more goals.

At the end of the third quarter, the score was 14-8. The Owls clipped Gardner-Webb’s chances of having a momentous comeback by securing four more goals, tallying a final score of 18-10.

An all-time record of 5-1 against the Running Bulldogs was achieved by the Owls. Mia MacKenzie and Hannah Barth were also able to score hat tricks.

McKenzie Jackson celebrated scoring two goals, as did Natalie Welch who scored one goal. Jaxysn Schonewille proved KSU’s stellar teamwork was a dominant force as she had a multi-assist day. KSU managed to rack up 29-24 advantage on shots and 21-16 advantage on shots on goal against Gardner-Webb.

“I thought today was a really good team win,” head coach Laura Maness said. “We let them hang in there in the first quarter with us, but from then on, I thought the rest of the quarters we won, and we won them big. Defensively we caused a lot of turnovers. We were scrappy back there. There were some key players we wanted to focus on, and we did a great job, while our man-down defense was also good. All in all, we made great adjustments after the first quarter to put us in a position to win the game.”

“Having a lot of people score today, and to have a lot of them assisted was great to see, we have already passed last year’s assist total, so we are moving the ball much better today and that’s showing on the scoreboard,” Maness boasted.

When asked about ASUN opponent, Stetson Hatters, Maness said, “Opening ASUN play at Stetson is something we talked about when approaching this game. We really wanted to not just do what we had to do to win today, but also fire up our team on getting prepared for Stetson.”

“Having played some common opponents, I think you can see on the scoreboard we’ve showed that we have improved tremendously from last year to this year,” Maness said.

KSU will face ASUN opponent, the Jacksonville Dolphins, on April 9 at 3 p.m. at Rock Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida.

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