ITHACA, N.Y. --The Ithaca women's lacrosse team (9-5, 6-2 Empire 8) was outlasted by Nazareth (10-4, 5-2 Empire 8), 18-9, in Empire 8 conference action on Friday afternoon at Higgins Stadium.

The Golden Flyers went up 2-0 at 26:19 before the teams went goal-for-goal over the next six minutes to make it a 4-3 Nazareth lead with 20:02 remaining in the first stint. The next five straight tallies went to the visitors. The Bombers broke up the scoring streak as the half ended 10-4. The second half opened in back-and-forth fashion before Nazareth finished the last seven minutes of play with four unanswered goals to clinch the 18-9 victory.

Senior Katie Hurley (Honeoye Falls-Lima/Honeoye Falls) and junior Nicole Borisenok (Albany Academy for Girls/Watervliet) led the Bombers' scoring efforts with two apiece. Five other Bombers would each hit the back of the net once.

Senior defender Elizabeth Marino (The Hun School/Skillman, N.J.) had a team-high four ground balls, while sophomore Michelle Avery (Brien McMahon/Norwick, Conn.) and senior Abby Peterson (Mount Mansfield Union/Underhill, Vt.) each caused three turnovers for the Bombers. Hurley won a team-best three draw controls.

Sophomore net-minder Jess Worthman (Hauppauge/Commack) took the loss having made seven stops the Bombers.

Down by two goals early in the first stanza, the Bombers got on the board with a tally from Hurley at 24:42 to make it 2-1 Nazareth lead. The Golden Flyers answered one minute later before Avery made a quick run to the net off the draw to make it 3-2 with 23:30 left in the first half. The squads would each tally one apiece before Nazareth scored five straight to make in 9-3 going into the last ten minutes. Borisenok took a feed from sophomore Tracy Rivas (East Meadow/East Meadow) to finish the Bombers' scoring, but Nazareth would net one more to make it 10-4 after 30 minutes of play.

Second half scoring started at 27:15 with Nazareth rattling off two, which the Bombers mirrored maintaining the six goal deficit. Back-and-forth scoring would continue as the Bombers had two unassisted goals from Rivas and senior Ali DeCirce (Binghamton/Binghamton). Borisenok would finalize the Bomber attack with her second in the game before the Golden Flyers scored four goals in the last eight minutes of play to end all tallies at 18-9.

The Bombers took 16 of 29 draw controls, but the Golden Flyers had a slight edge in shots and ground balls with 33 and 27, respectively. The Bombers took 28 shots and picked up 24 ground balls.

Ithaca will finish regular-season play with a home match against Rochester at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26.

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