The Ohio Northern women's lacrosse team jumped to a big early lead and held off a furious late rally to win 17-15 at Baldwin Wallace on Wednesday night at Finnie Stadium.
The Polar Bears improve to 3-3 overall and are 3-3 in the Ohio Athletic Conference, while the Yellow Jackets fall to 0-5, 0-5.
Freshman Sydney Kilgore (Pleasant Plain/Little Miami) tied a school record with 10 points, scoring seven goals and adding three assists, to lead Ohio Northern.
She tied the single-game mark held by Maddie Storr in 2019 and Rachel Shipman in 2017.
Kilgore's seven goals ties her personal high mark and is the fifth time in six games she has had a hat trick with three or more goals.
Senior Annie McArn (Bay Village/Western Reserve Academy) and freshman Noel Orioli (Westerville/North) also had three-goal hat tricks for the Polar Bears.
Baldwin Wallace was led by Deanna Loukas with four goals.
The Polar Bears scored seven consecutive goals in 7:33 span to take a quick 7-1 lead with 12:50 gone in the contest.
ONU held a comfortable lead for the next 29 minutes and Kilgore scored with 13:15 left in the game to put Northern ahead 15-8.
But BW rallied by scoring six of the next seven goals to pull within 16-14 with 5:59 remaining.
Kilgore picked up a man-down goal with 1:46 to go to increase the lead to 17-14.
Baldwin Wallace scored with 1:03 left to make it 17-15, but ONU won the ensuing draw control and ran out the clock for the victory.
ONU out-shot BW 34-33, won the ground ball battle 19-15 and held a 21-19 advantage in ground balls.
Freshman Molly Dixson (Cannonsburg, Pa./Canon-McMillan) had seven saves in goal and sophomore Amanda Wells (Mason) had five ground balls for ONU.
The Polar Bears will return home on Saturday for a 1 pm contest against Muskingum on Senior Day at Dial-Roberson Stadium.
Men's lacrosse
Senior Cameron Marous (Brecksville/Brecksville/Broadview Heights) was named the Ohio Athletic Conference Men's Lacrosse Offensive Player of the Week for the week of March 1-7.
Marous dished out a school record seven assists and scored a goal for eight points as Ohio Northern opened the Ohio Athletic Conference portion of its schedule with a 25-6 victory at Heidelberg on Saturday afternoon
He broke his own single-game record of six assists he shared with Steven Slagle.
Marous is ONU's all-time career leader in goals (119), assists (96) and points (215).
This marks the fourth time in his career that Marous has been named the OAC Offensive Player of the Week.
The Polar Bears (2-0 overall, 1-0 OAC) will return to action Saturday at Muskingum.
Softball
ADA — Seniors Gabby Stewart (Union, Ky./St. Henry) and Brady Guest (Convoy/Crestview) led off the bottom of the sixth inning with back-to-back doubles to lift the Ohio Northern softball team to a 1-0 victory over Heidelberg in the home opener on Monday at the ONU Softball Field.
Both the Polar Bears and the Student Princes are now 1-1-1 on the season after splitting the three games in the series.
The games will not count toward the Ohio Athletic Conference regular season standings as ONU and HU will play another 4-game set in the 36-game quadruple round-robin schedule later this year.
With the score knotted at 0-0, Stewart led off the bottom of the sixth with a double off the right center field fence.
Guest the doubled down the right field line to score junior pinch runner Amanda Hish (Gainesville, Va./Patriot) to put ONU ahead 1-0.
Sophomore Allie Bican (Solon), freshman MarcQue Harris (Fremont/Old Fort) and junior Stacey Walters(Sunbury/Big Walnut) combined for the shutout, scattering seven hits and striking out six as a group.
Walters threw the final two innings, allowing only two hits, to earn the win and improve to 1-0 on the season.
Stewart went 2-for-3 with two doubles and sophomore Sydney Motylinski (Ida, Mich.) was 2-for-3 with a double for ONU.
The Polar Bears will return to action with a 4-game set against Capital to open OAC play this weekend. The two teams will play a double header at Capital on Saturday and a twin-bill at ONU on Sunday.
