The Oswego State women's lacrosse team opened its SUNYAC slate with a 16-9 loss to Oneonta in a neutral-site home game played at Fayetteville-Manlius High School on Saturday afternoon. With the defeat, the Lakers fall to 4-4 overall on the year and 0-1 in conference action while the Red Dragons go to 3-6, 1-0.
Oneonta jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the opening 7:04, registering an unassisted goal, an assisted goal and two free-position conversions in that span. Briana Kimble broke up the spurt her 10th goal of the season, sending home a free-position opportunity. Teammate Erannan Shattuck pulled the Lakers to within two with 17:58 remaining in the first half, making it 4-2 with an unassisted tally.
The Red Dragons would tally three more before the break, with Emily Lange notching the final Oswego goal of the half on a free-position at 6:33. Oneonta would take a 7-3 lead into the locker room at halftime.
It was déjà vu in the second half, as Oneonta started off with four-straight goals to expand its lead to 11-4 over the Lakers. Gemma O'Kane, Mackenzie Kjerstad and Emily Lange than compiled a run of their own, each scoring to narrow the Red Dragon to advantage to 11-7. After letting up a score to Oneonta, Oswego again made it a four-goal game on Morgan Kelly's first collegiate tally. That was the closest the Lakers would come the rest of the way, as Shattuck scored her 18th goal of the year with just over 10 minutes to play, which proved to be the squad's last point of the contest.
Shattuck secured her third-straight game with five-or-more points, scoring twice while assisting on three other Laker goals. Also scoring twice was senior Emily Lange. Mackenzie Kjerstad and Danielle Cronk tied for a team-high five ground balls while Cronk also paced the team with four caused turnovers.
Goalie Angela Ponto made eight saves in the loss.
As a team, Oswego was perfect on the clear, successfully making it from its defensive zone to its offensive box 20 times. The Lakers had two more caused turnovers than the Red Dragons (12-10) and nine more ground balls (20-11).
Oswego will return to action at 4 p.m. on Tuesday when it hosts New Paltz at Cazenovia College.
