The Men’s Lacrosse Team faced Lafayette on Saturday, April 20, the team’s senior day, and had an impressive win, defeating the Leopards 16-7 and ending the team’s six-game losing streak. The Raiders honored 11 seniors: Will Blumenberg, Ryan Caley, Sam Cleveland, Jack Donaghue, Matt Donovan, Danny Healey, Duncan Hoskinson, John Mc- Donald, Connor Mullen, Cyrus Scott, and Jimmy Williams.

Colgate had a strong offensive performance led by junior attack Griffin Brown and first-year attacker Brian Minicus, who both had hat tricks. Senior attack Sam Cleveland had a strong offensive performance as well, scoring two goals and three assists for the Raiders. Aside from these three players, Colgate saw action from seven other players as the team spread its scoring among 10 different players, the most Raider goal-scorers in a game this year.

Lafayette had the first goal of the game, but the Raiders did not let up and scored five goals in the first quarter to pull away with a 5-2 lead. The Leopards responded to this strong performance by the Raiders and got within two, moving the score to 6-4. However, the Raiders continued to produce well on the offensive end and saw goals from Brown, Hawkins and Cleveland to pull ahead 9-4 at halftime.

First-year midfielder Brendan Jordan, sophomore LSM Nick Salameda and junior attack Jesse Rosenblatt all scored their second goals of the season and junior attack Cooper Belanger scored his first career goal. These goals put Colgate ahead 16-5.

This strong offensive performance from the Raiders as well as persistent defense allowed for the team to pull out an impressive win on their senior day. This win moved Colgate to a record of 4-8 overall and 2-5 in the Patriot League.

“We are so happy to have pulled away with a win on senior day. We have been working hard all season and we seemed to finally connect on both ends today. It was great to see many players produce offensively, and our defense play well to limit their offense from scoring,” Williams said. “We are looking forward to our next game against Bucknell and hope to come out with another big win to end our regular season.”

“I’m so happy for the senior class and what they’ve accomplished. The challenge was we didn’t know exactly where we stood as far as the Patriot League tournament, but the things we talk about every day are being decision-makers—on and off the field,” Head Coach Matt Karweck said. “We talk about how we practice, not that we practiced. And today was a culmination of all the things we talk about: staying sticky on defense, communicating with each other, having a clean substitution box, pressing transition, scoring off stick or low, hip or right by the goalie.

All of these different things that we speak about day-in and day-out, today we finally put it all together.”

Despite the victory, the Raiders are unfortunately out of contention for this year’s Patriot League playoffs and as such will not be competing in the postseason this year. Although the team won’t see postseason play, Karweck’s first season could be considered a success as the team had their first win over Syracuse in nearly a decade.

Stay tuned to watch the Raiders take on Bucknell on Friday, April 26, to end their regular season play. The Bison are 5-8 overall and 3-4 in the Patriot League after they defeated Lehigh 12-10 on Saturday, April 27. Faceoff is at 7 p.m. in Lewisburg, PA and CBS Sports Network will be covering the game. Be sure to cheer on the Raiders!

Contact Kate Kelly at [email protected].