Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Explodes For A New Single Game Goals Record

The final score looks a little closer than this one really was, but Marquette women’s lacrosse torched Butler, 24-17, as they set a new team record for goals in a game. The Golden Eagles are now 7-7 on the year and, more importantly, 2-1 in Big East play.

Marquette set the tempo out of the gate, scoring three times in the first six minutes, but they officially flipped this game in their favor early in the second quarter. Lydia Foust scored with 43 seconds left in the first quarter to give her a hat trick in less than 15 minutes, but more importantly, she kicked off the big run of the game. She scored the first two goals of the next quarter to provide the jumping off point for a 5-0 Marquette run that left the Golden Eagles up 10-2 with 9:47 left before halftime. Ultimately, Butler never recovered from this.

We’ll get into it more in a second, but I want to highlight Lydia Foust for a second. The game’s 20:13 old at this point. She has five of Marquette’s 10 goals, and just for giggles, she assisted on two of the other five markers. Seven points in just over 20 minutes. Technically, seven points in just over 18 minutes, since that’s when she scored her last goal of this early burst. That’s insane.

Marquette would tack on three more goals before the half ended, including Kyra LaMotte tallying her 30th goal of the season with six seconds left. That made it 13-4 heading into intermission. This is the largest that Marquette’s lead would get all afternoon on Saturday, because Butler went a little bit crazy in the third quarter. The Bulldogs cut it to 14-7 in the first three minutes of the third, and then scored four more before the period was over to make it a 17-11 game with 1:16 left. Thankfully, Foust wasn’t done scoring goals, and she beat the horn to make it a seven goal margin with 15 minutes to go. As luck would have it, that FPS strike gave her a new career best in goals and points.

From here, Marquette was able to keep the Bulldogs at arm’s length. They pulled within six, 19-13, Marquette put two more back on the board. BU scored again, Marquette answered with two more to make it 23-14 with 5:10 to go. Somehow, this game still had four goals left in it, but the Golden Eagles clearly had it put away.

Foust wasn’t the only one going wild on the offensive end, and she finished with nine points after helping out on MU’s final goal of the game. Mary Schumar recorded seven assists on the afternoon, which is impressive seeing as Marquette scored seven times before Schumar even tagged her first helper in the second quarter. Not only does that tie a program record set by Claire Costanza and tied by Cate Soccodato, but it’s also a career best for Schumar and tied for the second most assists by any player in the country this season.

Falling into the “any other game and we’re jumping up and down about this” category is a five goal outing by LaMotte, as well as identical three goal/two assist days from both Emma Soccodato and Meg Bireley. Family bragging right still go to older sister Greer Bireley, who put up three goals and three assists for Butler in this game. At least Meg gets to hold the team W, right?

Oh, and Shea Garcia had a hat trick to maintain her team lead in goals. Imagine playing in a game where you have a hat trick, and it’s the sixth most interesting thing to happen on offense.

Wanna watch some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com? There’s a lot of them, obviously.

Up Next: Marquette takes a break from Big East play when they welcome #18 Notre Dame to town. The Fighting Irish are now 6-8 on the year and 2-5 in the ACC after they beat first year Pitt 19-7 in South Bend on Saturday. Yes, they’re under .500 by a notable amount and still ranked #18 in the country, no it does not make sense, but there’s also a new poll coming out on Monday morning.