Vermont women’s lacrosse embraced MAACtion this week, as two teams from the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference visited Virtue Field.

UVM hosted Siena College Wednesday Feb. 28 in a game that saw history made.

Junior midfielder Elise Koehl tied a school record with eight goals in the game as the Catamounts defeated the Saints 17-10.

The Catamounts started strong, opening the game with four goals before Siena even took a shot, and went into halftime with a 10-3 lead. By that point, Koehl was over halfway to her historic eight-goal tally, with five of the 10 first-half goals.

The Saints started the second half strong, scoring the first three goals to cut the UVM lead to 10-6. They had a chance to cut it to three and put serious pressure on the hosts, but junior goalkeeper Maddy Kuras made a key save.

The Cats then scored three in a row, but Siena pulled it back to 14-10 and had a chance to cut it to three again from a free position, but Kuras and the UVM defense denied them. UVM scored the final three goals, including Koehl’s seventh and eighth.

Koehl became the third player in Catamount history to score eight goals in a game. The most recent instance prior to Koehl was March 2007, when Emilie Clark ’08 also scored eight against Siena, according to UVM athletics.

“I wasn’t really keeping track [of how many goals I had scored],” Koehl said. “I really just wanted to put the ball in the back of the net for our team to win the game.”

Head coach Sarah Dalton had high praise for Koehl’s recent performances.

“She was outstanding to get eight in a game,” Dalton said. “But she’s been doing that for us in the previous three games, getting us goals at big times.”

The win ensures the Catamounts will finish the season with a better record than the 1-15 mark last season.

Another battle took place at Virtue Field on a Saturday as the Manhattan Jaspers came in to play the Catamounts.

Strong goalkeeping ensured a 10-7 victory for the visitors.

Manhattan scored six of the first seven goals in the game.

UVM cut the lead to three in the final seconds of the first half, but Sarah Lang scored with seven seconds to go to send Manhattan to halftime with a four-goal lead.

Only three goals were scored in the second half, with two from UVM and one from the Jaspers.

The hero for Manhattan was goalkeeper Nikki Prestiano, who made 19 saves, several of them in second-half crunch time.

UVM is now 2-3 on the season.