HARROGATE, Tenn. – The LMU women's lacrosse team will open the 2018 season with a pair of matches this weekend in Florida. On Friday evening they play at Palm Beach Atlantic and they will face eleventh-ranked Rollins Sunday morning.

The team enters their fourth season striving to build on the 2017 campaign, which went 6-9 and doubled the win total from the year before and also saw the program's first South Atlantic Conference win.

The Lady Railsplitters return all but four players from last year's squad, and three were named to preseason All-SAC squads this year. Casey Kelly was named to the preseason First Team, as the junior tied for leading goal-scoring honors with Kennedy Buechner with 31 goals and led the team in assists with 15 and points (a combination of goals and assists) with 46. She also led the team in ground balls (38), caused turnovers (27), and draws controlled (51). The 46 points were a new program high for a single season and the 15 assists tied the previous program high, also set by Kelly in 2016.

Jasmine Click was named to the Second Team after scoring 30 goals and having nine assists and 39 points last season. She also led the team in free position goals with 12 and won 36 draws while picking up 28 ground balls.

Zoe Zervos also earns a spot on the Second Team on the back of a freshman campaign that saw her score 28 goals and earn six assists and 34 points. She had game winning goals at Lee and Brevard while picking up 30 ground balls. She also won 15 draws and caused 16 turnovers last season.

Buechner tied with Kelly for scoring leader last year, as she had 31 goals and four assists for 35 points. She also had 27 ground balls.

???????Amara Moss' season was limited by injury, but she had 21 goals, eight assists, 26 ground balls and won 46 draws.

Returning in cage for her senior season is Shannon Novak, who is one of only two players to play goalie for LMU and comes into the season having spent 2,417:51 minutes in cage out of the program's 2,509:41 total minutes played. Last season she was the only goalie to see action as she had 150 saves and a goals against average of 12.47 in 900 minutes of action.

Palm Beach Atlantic will inaugurate their women's lacrosse program in Friday's game with LMU. (The men also played the Sailfish in their first game last week.)

Rollins is 0-1 on the season after falling at Tampa 10-6 last Saturday. Paige Brock led the Tars with three goals and an assist while Hannah Aston chipped in two goals.

After Sunday's game, LMU will be off until March 3, when they begin a four-game home stand by hosting Siena Heights.