NORTON, Mass. --  The Wheaton College (Mass.) women's lacrosse team was defeated by visiting United States Coast Guard Academy, 17-9, this afternoon in a New England Women's & Men's Athletic Conference contest at Nordin Field on the Wheaton campus in Norton, Mass. The Lyons fall to 8-4 overall and 3-1 in league play, while the Bears win their seventh straight to improve to 8-3 overall and a perfect 4-0.

Coast Guard held a decided advantage in shots with a 37-22 margin. The teams were pretty even outside of the shot disparity with each team winning 15 draw controls. The visitors were consistent, scoring between three and five goals in every quarter.

Junior midfielder Brooke Harvey (Cape Elizabeth, Maine) led Wheaton with four goals and eight draw controls to go with four ground balls, while first year attacker Lara Finnie (Westfield, Mass.) netted a pair of goals and added an assist and a ground ball. Senior middie Darien Webb (Hamden, Conn.) scored a pair of goals and added four draw controls. Senior defender Mia Murray (Kennebunk, Maine) picked up five ground balls and caused three turnovers and first year midfielder Gabriella Smart (Oakland, Maine) registered five ground balls and two caused turnovers. Junior goalie Emily Oundjian (Longmeadow, Mass.) made 13 saves for the Lyons.

Sophomore attacker Sarah Skurat (Marlboro, N.J.) netted a career-high five goals and senior attacker Katherine Pittman (Nantucket, Mass.) scored four times to lead the Bears. Skurat also picked up a pair of ground balls, while Pittman added an assist to match her career high in points (five) and goals (four). First year midfielder Caitlyn Coates (Hanover, Pa.) tallied four points with three goals and an assist, while sophomore defender Mia Becker (Hudson, Ohio) tied for the match lead with five ground balls and eight draw controls in addition to three caused turnovers. Sophomore goalie Devon McCue (Annapolis, Md.) stopped six shots in the win for Coast Guard.

The teams counter-punched throughout the entire first quarter with Skurat and Harvey trading goals to open the quarter and to end the period, scoring within a minute of each other both times. Pittman and Webb exchanged markers in the middle of the quarter and the teams headed to the second session with a tied score at 3-3.

The Bears scored the first four goals of the second quarter and five of six and never looked back, holding Wheaton to just six goals over the final three quarters of play. Junior attacker Brenda Anderson (Naperville, Ill.) scored twice during the surge to open the quarter for Coast Guard, before Finnie found the back of the net for Wheaton with 3:16 left in the quarter to cut the deficit to 7-4. Coates tallied the final goal of the quarter to give the Bears an 8-4 lead heading into the break.

Pittman and Webb traded goals within the first two minutes of the third quarter to make it 9-5. Coast Guard reeled off four unanswered goals, including two from Skurat, to take its biggest lead of the match at 13-5 with 6:40 to go in the period.  Harvey and Finnie each netted a goal in the final three minutes to pull the Lyons to within 13-7 before the final quarter of play.

Skurat scored her fifth goal of the game less than three minutes into the period, before sophomore attacker Avonlea LeBeau (North Branford, Conn.) answered 96 seconds later for Wheaton. Pittman and Harvey scored to counter each other within a 90-second span to keep it a six-goal margin at 15-9 with 8:15 to play in the game, but it was as close as the Lyons would get. Coates and Pittman netted the final two markers of the day for the Bears.

Wheaton returns to the turf when it plays host to Babson College for a conference match on Wednesday, April 13 at 7:00 p.m., while Coast Guard hosts NEWMAC foe Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the same day and time.