INDIANAPOLIS - The Marian women's lacrosse finished off their conference opener with a 17-6 win over the Concordia University Cardinals. The Knights are now 3-3 overall and 1-0 in conference.

The Knights took action early in the game scoring three unanswered goals in the first three minutes of play, as they took a quick 3-0 lead forcing a Concordia time-out. Katie Murphy scored the first, as Lizzy Piercy took action and scored the second, to leave Ella Grace Giedd to score the third. Marian quickly came out of the Cardinals time-out with Ashlynn Gray and Murphy scoring back-to-back free position shots. Concordia attempted to decrease the lead with a goal at the 4:08 mark. Murphy quickly fired back with another goal to end off the quarter to allow the Knights to take the 6-1 lead at the end of the quarter.

Concordia got their hand at the first goal of the second quarter with a goal scored in the first 15 seconds of play. The Knights were quick to fire back with Ruby Mason scoring her first goal of the afternoon to bring the lead back to five. A.Gray was able to score her second goal of the day within a minute of Mason's to bring the Knights to a 7-2 lead over the Cardinals. Marian scored four more goals within the next three minutes to force Concordia to call another time out at the 8:06 mark. Giedd and Katelynn Gray scored two of the goals while Mason scored the other two for the Knights to end the first half with a score of 12-2.

Claudine Umumporeze and Tori Farkas opened up the second half with two consecutive free position shots to bring the Knights lead up to 12 goals. Concordia had a goal soon after to cut the difference down by one. K. Gray quickly answered with her second goal of the night to bring the score 15-3 by the end of the third quarter.

Concordia pushed at Marian's lead by two back-to-back goals to open the fourth quarter. Mason and Taleah Nool fired back with two more goals to bring the game back to a 12 goal lead for the Knights. In their final attempts to decrease Marian's lead the Cardinals scored the last goal of the evening to end the game at 17-6 to secure the win for the Knights. 

Offensively for the Knights, Mason and Murphy led the team in goals with four each in the win. Katelynn Gray led the Knights in assists with three while adding one goal for the evening. The Knights dominated in the draw circle with 19 draw controls in the win, and were led by five wins each for Katelynn and Ashlynn Gray and Madeline Dumke. Dumke, along with Mson led the team in ground balls and caused turnovers. In goal, Katherine Hirsch took the win allowing two goals in her first half action. Grace Coyne took over in goal for the second half, making two saves. 

The Knights are back in action on Wednesday, March 20th at home against Madona University (Mich.) with the first draw set at 3:00 p.m.

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