KENT, Ohio – Taking a seven-goal haymaker from Kent State over the first 15 minutes only to regain their composure and limit any similar outbursts over the remaining three chapters, the Presbyterian College lacrosse team pushed the Golden Flashes into a brick wall defensively following that frenzied opening for an 11-10 road W on Thursday afternoon.

Sophomore keeper Naomi Lauderbaugh anchored PC's four-goal rally by vastly slowing down a KSU offense that was cooking with gas after the first stanza, allowing the Blue Hose attack to steadily chip away at the deficit until they broke the door down all the way to seize their third victory of the year by a single score.

Four different Presbyterian players totaled at least two goals in the thrilling win at a hostile environment, led by recently-turned 100-goal member Abby Edmisten's quartet. Willow Hammond, Kylie Sullivan, Ava Ward, and Avery West pieced together the other seven strikes that PC had to offer on Thursday, concluding the contest on a 5-2 flurry when faced with an 8-6 hole.
 
NOTABLES
- While head coach Eric Clakeley's offense deserves immense praise for going toe-to-toe with an opponent that had already posted 15 goals or more on three different dates, Lauderbaugh takes the cake by halting four Kent State attempts in the nail-biter, chugging through 45 minutes of exceptional defensive work.

- Madison Foti, Paige Gacek, Taryn Tomas, and Kendall Goldfarb contributed to PC's turnaround with nine ground ball scoops amongst themselves, part of a back line that bustled the Golden Flashes into seven caused turnovers.

- Magnified to a great degree when considering the miniscule margin of victory, Presbyterian was able to catch Kent State sleeping not once, not twice, but thrice as the bout heated up in intensity, netting a trio of goals within a period's final nine seconds – two of which came from the stick of Edmisten.

- Across a nonconference matchup that featured five ties and a KSU advantage for most of the affair, PC was gifted their first lead in the waning moments of quarter #3 on Edmisten's aforementioned last-second swing, eventually finding the game-winning sequence by Hammond on an unassisted cash-in with 4:20 on the clock.
 
HOW IT HAPPENED
- Ascending to an unparalleled pace of offensive weaponry out of the blocks, a 7-4 score with just one period down officially registered as the highest-scoring period involving the Blue Hose since the sport transitioned from halves to quarters at the start of the 2022 campaign. Kent State succeeded in all but one of its shot tries in the 1^st, although were only ahead by a triple thanks to Edmisten, West, Ward, and Hammond answering back in a timely manner.

- Ward's first of two scores kicked off a 3-0 run from the visitors that bled into the halfway point of the 2^nd, and although the Golden Flashes remained coveting the lead at intermission, it was coach Clakeley's group that held all the momentum due to Edmisten's woman-up opportunity with nine ticks left until the horn to make it 8-7.

- Only six combined goals categorized the final two chapters after the breakneck tempo of the game's first half, but just two of them came from the home side thanks to PC's constant ball pursuit and Lauderbaugh's preventative efforts. The Blue Hose were able to escape KSU's clutches despite being -14 in the draw control count.

- Edmisten (the team's offensive leader with 16 strikes and counting this year) ramped up her scoring total to seven over the past two meetings that also includes a 10-9 triumph at Akron 48 hours earlier, scoring twice less than five minutes apart to put Presbyterian ahead in crunch time.

- The always-reliable fourth-year leader has now tied a career-best for the longest streak of multi-goal games in her career, equaling a five-game series when she was a sophomore. Edmisten has recorded 22 total points this season, alongside 129 overall while donning the blue and white.

- As Kent State again brought the meeting to a deadlock with 12:35 remaining, Hammond would be the one to throw out the lifejacket at the under-five mark with her 11^th score of the year – a figure that ties Sullivan for the second-most on the roster. Her performance goes down as the ninth time in her underclassman tenure with two goals or more in a single outing, doing so for the third occasion in a row.

- PC was able to successfully gain a measure of payback from KSU's 15-12 win in Clinton last spring, ending the team's two-game trip to Ohio with consecutive W's that each necessitated a high level of focus and endurance to achieve.
 
UP NEXT
- Presbyterian's long stretch of pure road meetings continues into next week, although with a substantially-shorter trip on the horizon this Wednesday to face off with the Clemson Tigers. 4:00 p.m. will designate the start time of the in-state duel against a first-year program that has wasted no time in making waves on a national degree.

- Clemson was included as the #24 team in the nation as part of the latest IWLCA rankings (released every Monday), rewarding the Tigers for a 7-2 start and a three-game winning streak approaching Thursday's showdown with 4^th-ranked Boston College. Gaining their victories by an average margin of 15 goals per trip, Clemson figures to be a tall task for a PC squad that continues to improve with each passing outcome.