By: Jon Skuza, Sports Reporter
Canisius women’s lacrosse capped off its regular season with a dominating 18–8 win over the Iona Gaels (1–9) Saturday afternoon.
Canisius (2–7) was led by a strong six-point performance by Marissa Malvaso, who recorded her 100th career point, the 20th player in program history to achieve that milestone.
Other notable performances for the Griffs were Riley Davis and Paige Stachura, who both recorded four points.
Canisius dominated the first half by getting out to a 1–0 lead 1:19 into the game by a goal from Malvaso. Malvaso and Katie Smolensky would add on to the Griffs lead making it 3–0 over Iona.
The Griffs continued their dominant first half with three straight goals to make it 6–1 with 10 minutes remaining in the first half and went up 10–3 by halftime.
After Iona opened up the scoring in the second half to make it 10–4, Canisius answered with five straight goals to take a commanding 15–4 lead. The final score of 18–8 matched the Griffs’ largest lead of the day after it had a 17–7 lead.
"We came out and competed extremely well from the opening whistle.” head coach Allison Daley told GoGriffs.com. “We had energy from every single player and everyone bought in and was locked into our game plan. I am proud of the complete team effort.”
Canisius will now prepare for the MAAC tournament. The team will play on Saturday, May 1 against Iona in a play-in game for the right to face top-seeded Fairfield. Canisius will look to build off the momentum from the win against Iona heading into the tournament.
“The biggest thing leading into postseason play is that we continue to get better this week all over the field,” Daley said. “We need to have another important week of practice where we work to see improvement and focus on Canisius lacrosse."