SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – Endicott avenged their only regular season defeat in the Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) and captured their eighth consecutive CCC women's lacrosse title on Saturday afternoon with a 17-15 victory over Western New England at Golden Bear Stadium.
The second seeded Gulls outscored top-seeded Western New England 10-7 in the second half to improve to 12-7 on the season and capture the CCC's automatic bid to the NCAA Division III women's lacrosse championship.
Junior Callie Murphy (Woburn, Mass.) led all scorers with six goals and eight points for Endicott, while senior Caitlin Pratt (Bow, N.H.) scored four times and Kelly Tierney (South Hadley, Mass.) dished out five assists.
Freshman Brooke Kumnick (Granby, Conn.) paced the Golden Bears with five goals.
The teams traded the first four goals of the game and Endicott registered the first two-goal lead at 4-2 when Murphy and Katie Tierney (South Hadley, Mass.) scored back-to-back markers at 18:05.
The Golden Bears pulled back to 4-3 when freshman Taylor Scialdone (Yorktown Heights, N.Y.) completed a hat trick with the first three Western New England tallies. Scialdone would be held scoreless the rest of the game, but Western New England exploded for four straight goals, three from Kumnick and one from freshman Tori Cirocco (Carmel, N.Y.) to take an 8-6 lead before Pratt answered before the half, where the Gulls trailed 8-7.
Cirocco and Kumnick connected on either side of a Lauren Todd (Newfields, N.H.) tally to open the second half for the Golden Bears, but the Gulls scored seven of the next nine goals to put themselves back in front, 15-12. Todd capped that run by completing her hat trick, while Holly davis (Guilford, Conn.) scored twice within a span of two minutes and Murphy connected three more times.
Western New England sophomore Jessica Scannapieco (Blue Bell, Pa.) had both of her goals and one of her two assists in the second half, but her marker that made it 17-15 Endicott with 3:32 left to play would prove to be the final goal of the game.
Junior goalie Rachel Socolow (Westford, Mass.) made ten saves in the victory, while her counterpart, sophomore Melissa Perry (Somers, Conn.) was forced into fourteen stops, as the Gulls outshot their opponents 31-25.
Scannapieco won 15 draw controls, one more than the entire Endicott team. Davis and Rachel Campos (Shrewsbury, Mass.) each collected five draws in the victory, while Katie Tierney collected four ground balls and caused two of Endicott's seven turnovers.
The Gulls were successful on 14 of their 19 clear attempts, while the Golden Bears only cleared the ball eight times on 15 tries, committing 19 turnovers in the game. Western New England did score on five of their seven free position attempts, however, and the Gulls converted just three goals in the same number of tries.
Junior Kelsey Sherman (Buchanan, N.Y.) led the Golden Bears wit h four ground balls and caused a turnover to go with two assists.
Western New England falls to 14-5 on the season and will wait to see if they receive an invitation to play in a postseason tournament.
