KEENE, N.H. – There was good news and bad news when the Eastern Connecticut State University women's lacrosse team opened its 2023 Little East Conference season against Keene State College Saturday afternoon at the Owl Athletic Complex.
 
The good news was the return to the lineup of three starters after recent injuries – including top scorer and draw control machine Caroline Stent (Weatogue) -- and the fact that two first-year players figured prominently in the scoring Saturday.
 
The bad news was that three of Eastern's goals came well after the 19-6 outcome had been decided and that Eastern (2-5) lost its sixth straight to Keene (2-7) – a winner of only one of its first eight contests but a team which had played a decidedly superior schedule than the Warriors thus far.
 
Keene scored 12 unanswered goals and 17 of the game's 19 from the start of the second quarter until midway through the fourth quarter to post a double-digit win over Eastern for the fifth time in six games.
 
Keene and Eastern entered the season ranked 4-5, respectively in the LEC pre-season coaches poll, but the Owls used a ten-goal second quarter to build a 12-3 halftime lead on the way to the easy win.
 
Keene scored its goals on only 29 shots, connecting on 66 percent of its attempts. Since potting 14 of 23 free-position shots in the first five games (61 percent), Eastern is 3-of-15 (20 percent) on free-positions in consecutive one-sided losses.
 
First-year players Alexa Vizzini (Vernon, NJ) and Sydney Goyette (Westfield, MA) combined for five of Eastern's goals in the match, with junior Kaylee Drobish (Wallingford) collecting the other. However, three of Eastern's goals came inside the final six minutes of a game by that time clearly out of reach.
 
Stent won four draws and Vizzini three as the Warriors held their own in that department by winning nearly half of those taken. Stent won six of the team's 20 ground balls, senior Jessie Pyrek-Bennett (Monroe) adding four.
 
As a team, the Warriors committed 30 turnovers – their highest total of the season.
 
Eastern hosts Framingham State University Wednesday in a non-conference match at 4 p.m. at Rick McCarthy Field. The Rams are under the direction of second-year head coach Devyne Doran '17, a former two-time LEC Defensive Player-of-the-Year and assistant coach at Eastern.  Doran led Framingham to the 2022 Mass. State College Athletic Conference (MASCAC) championship in her first season and to the NCAA tournament.