Middlebury, Vt. - With the score tied at halftime, the visiting Trinity College Bantams tallied the opening four goals of the second stanza en route to a 13-9 New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) women's lacrosse victory this afternoon over the Middlebury College Panthers on Kohn Field.  Trinity, ranked No. 7 nationally, improves to 11-2 with its fifth win in a row and its ninth straight against Middlebury. The No. 2-ranked Panthers fall to 10-1 overall and 6-1 in the conference.  Both teams face No. 11-ranked Hamilton in their respective next games next week.  

In a back-and-forth opening half during which neither team held greater than a two-goal advantage, Middlebury got on the board first 21 seconds into action when Laurel Pascal scored on a pass from behind the net by Alli Sciarretta. Nearly three minutes later, Trinity scored twice just 16 seconds apart when sophomore Kiley Coffey (West Newbury, Mass.) scored on an extra-player opportunity with an upper-corner shot at 26:53 and junior midfielder Karly Simpson (South Hadley, Mass.) bounced an attempt in from six yards out.

Middlebury's Bridget Instrum recorded the next two goals giving the hosts a 3-2 advantage, and the teams traded the game's next four goals, all coming on free-position attempts, with scores by Mary O'Connell and Sciarretta for the Panthers and senior co-captain midfielder Martha Griffin (Exeter, N.H.) and Coffey Trinity.  With Middlebury in front, 5-4, at the 14:32 mark, the visitors reeled off three-straight goals with a pair from junior attacker Clare Lyne (Concord, Mass.), and the final coming on a player-down opportunity when sophomore Abby McInerney (Cape Elizabeth, Maine) bounced a shot past Middlebury goalie Katie Mandigo.  The Panthers closed the half with goals by Megan Griffin on a shot from the left side five yards out, and a stick-to-stick pass from Hollis Perticone to Pascal for her second of the game with 2:57 remaining as the teams went into the break tied at 7-7.            

Out of the intermission, the Bantams put together the decisive four-goal run over a span of nearly five minutes. Coffey scored her third of the game to start the spurt on a free-position shot that found the bottom of the net at 27:38, while Griffin, Simpson and Lyne each scored for an 11-7 lead with 22:43 left to play.  Instrum cut the Panther deficit to three with 20:50 on the clock on a stutter-step move, finishing into the bottom-left corner of the goal. Lyne responded for the Bantams a little more than five minutes later with her fourth of the game and 35th of the spring when she picked up a ground ball in front of the Panther crease and put home the shot.  Instrum again brought Middlebury to within three on a free-position score with 13:35 left, but the Panthers were unable to get pull any closer, as Coffey added an empty-net goal with less than a minute to go for the final score.           

Coffey and Lyne paced the Bantams with five points on four goals and an assist apiece, while Griffin tacked on two goals and had two helpers. Lyne concluded the contest with a team-high four draw controls.  Instrum led the Panthers with four goals, while Pascal finished with two scores and a team-best six ground balls.  Mandigo  took the loss in the crease for the Panthers, tallying five saves in 59:07 of action. Sophomore Zoe Ferguson (Ridgewood, N.J.) produced nine saves in the opening stanza for Trinity, while senior Emily Mooney (New York, N.Y.) grabbed the win to improve to 4-1, logging the final 30 minutes with three stops.