WISE, Va. — Kelly Csenar continued her torrid early-season offensive output and the defense contained the high-scoring Walsh University Cavaliers as the Lincoln Memorial women's lacrosse team won its fourth straight game 14-11 on Wednesday afternoon on the campus of the University of Virginia at Wise.
 
The contest was intended to be LMU's home opener but was moved to UVA-Wise's turf field due to wet field conditions at the LMU Lacrosse Complex.
 
Csenar scored a game-high five goals to lead the Lady Railsplitters, while Casey Kelly and Erin DePaul chipped in with three goals each. Kennedy Buechner added two goals and Melanie Cascio had a goal as well.
 
For the fourth consecutive match, LMU jumped out to an early lead with Cascio opening the scoring at the 28:20 mark. Kelly scored just over one minute later and Csenar had her first goal at the 24:09 mark to stake LMU to a 3-0 lead.
 
"We want to jump on teams right away," said Head Coach Caitlyn Corace. "That's what we are looking for. It gives us a nice cushion should we get into foul trouble."
 
LMU kept the pressure on in the first half, stringing together four straight goals during a four-minute stretch to build an 8-2 lead and go into the half leading 9-4.
 
The second half saw Walsh outscore the Lady Railsplitters 7-5, with four of those goals coming on free-position attempts, something Corace talked about avoiding leading up to the contest.
 
"We knew they liked to look inside and feed their scorers so we wanted to make sure to get our body in front of them and not give them open looks," noted Corace. "Our man to man defense was very good today. We managed to force them into shot clock violations a couple of times; it was just some of the switches where we got into trouble."
 
Walsh made the game close with three straight goals over a two-minute period in the second half before Kelly halted that run and righted the ship with a goal at the 6:40 mark, which was followed 20 seconds later by a DePaul tally to stretch the lead to 13-8. After the three consecutive Cavalier goals, Corace called a timeout to slow things down.
 
"I told the girls that we needed to keep playing our game and keep the ball out of our defensive end," recalled Corace. "The draw has been key for us so we made some changes on the draw and used better clock management in the offensive zone."
 
One of the keys to the win, which produced the first four-game winning streak in program history, was LMU's transition game.
 
"We have been working on improving our transitions in every practice," Corace noted. "We really spread the field today and utilized our clearing space for our people to move the ball up the field."
 
Next up for LMU is Coker this weekend, which marks the start of South Atlantic Conference play.
 
"This is opening weekend for conference and this will be a good test for us," Corace said. "We knocked them out of a spot in the conference tournament last year so I'm sure they will be coming with a little extra incentive.
 
"The girls have been working hard and they know that they have to play a full 60 minutes to be successful. We keep working hard and pushing each other in practice and as a result are seeing the fruits of their labor."
 
With more rain forecast for the coming weekend an alternative site is being considered for the match against Coker. Watch for an announcement on www.lmurailsplitters.com for location and times.