On a crisp Tuesday afternoon, March 26, the Hofstra women’s lacrosse team fell to the Dartmouth College Big Green 16-12 which ended their two-game winning streak. Alyssa Parrella continued her goal hot streak with a six-goal performance in the game to increase her season total to a team-leading 48 goals.
Dartmouth opened the scoring early on in the game, with Katie Bourque and Kierra Sweeny scoring the first three goals of the game just three minutes into the game. The Big Green continued their offensive pressure as they netted four additional goals as well in the first seven minutes to put the Pride down 7-0 early on.
At the 21:37 mark of the game, Parrella netted her first goal of the game to make it 7-1 in favor of Dartmouth. The Pride then found an offensive spark and scored four more goals to bring themselves back into the game, including the final two goals of the half.
But before the half was over, Dartmouth slid the ball past Pride goalie Jess Smith three more times to make the score 10-5 at the end of the first half.
Entering the second half, the Big Green had outshot the Pride 21-15 and also led the game in draw controls 9-7.
The second half would have action right from the start as Parrella and Arianna Esposito each found the back of the net early on to make the score 10-7 with 24 minutes remaining in the game.
The game then became a back-and-forth affair during the middle part of the second half as each team kept trading goals to make the score 13-9 with less than ten minutes remaining.
With 8:19 left in the game, the Pride began their late-game surge which was started by an Alexa Mattera goal. The Pride began to break the Dartmouth defense as Parrella found the back of the net twice, with a both a goal and free position shot respectively, in less than a minute to make the score 13-12 with about seven minutes remaining in the game. Those goals were also the fifth and sixth goals of the game for Parrella.
The comeback would end after Parella’s last goals as Dartmouth used three separate scorers in the final minutes to squash the Pride’s late game surge and win 16-12.
The Pride were able to keep the game close in the second half by outshooting Dartmouth 16-15 and also having only five turnovers to the Big Green’s eight. Parrella led the game in goals with six. The next leading scorer in the game being Dartmouth’s Kierra Sweeny with five goals.
The Pride look to avenge the loss to Dartmouth as they travel back to New York to face in state rival Columbia at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 30. The game will be streamed on ESPN+.
Photo courtesy of Hofstra Athletics
