Lewison Sparks CMS Women's Lacrosse to 21-14 Road Win Over Occidental

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Cate Lewison had a hat trick in the first quarter and finished with six goals, five caused turnovers, five ground balls, and six draw controls, as the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women's lacrosse team earned a 21-14 win over Occidental on Wednesday evening in a SCIAC road contest.

Bella Lynch added four goals for CMS, which now stands at 8-3 overall and 6-1 in the SCIAC, setting up a chance to move into a tie for first place with a win over undefeated Pomona-Pitzer on Saturday. Occidental falls to 8-7 overall and 5-5 in the league with the loss.

Lewison scored in the game's first minute, but Occidental was able to pull back even at 2-2. CMS then scored the final four goals of the first quarter, and extended the run to six straight goals by scoring the first two of the second quarter. Emma Merk started the run with a goal with 8:38 left in the first to give the Athenas the lead for good, and after Grace Minturn made it 4-2, Lewison scored two straight goals 1:07 apart to make it 6-2 heading into the second quarter. 

Abby Parrish then scored her first goal and Bella Lynch followed with her second to make it 8-2. After Occidental broke the run, Ainsley Basic and Parrish scored 32 seconds apart and Lewison added her fourth to make it 11-3, before the Tigers scored with 10 seconds left in the half to make it 11-4 at intermission.   

Occidental scored the first two goals of the second half to make it a 3-0 run and close to within 11-6, but Minturn and Emme McMullen scored 36 seconds apart, both off of feeds from Hannah Conte, to stretch it to 13-6. 

The Tigers got the lead down to five goals on three other occasions, but Taylor Daetz, McMullen and Catherine Murphy answered each time with goals. Lewison then won three straight draw controls, leading to two goals from Lynch and another from Murphy, to push the lead to 20-11. 

CMS will host Pomona-Pitzer on Saturday at 1 p.m., when the Athenas will try to hand the Sagehens (10-0 SCIAC) their first conference loss in the last two years. The closest Pomona-Pitzer has come to dropping a conference game since returning from the pandemic was last year at Zinda Field, when it needed overtime to defeat CMS 16-15.