May 3, 2008
No. 20 Stanford held off No. 17 Denver 9-8 to capture their fourth straight MPSF Tournament Championship. Senior Laura Shane stopped a free position shot by Denver attacker Karen Morton with nine seconds left to preserve the one goal lead. Freshman Sarah Flynn and sophomore Julie Christy each had three goals to lead the scoring for the Cardinal and senior All-American goalkeeper Laura Shane finished with a season-high 17 saves.
The Cardinal started off the match with one of the most dominating halves of their season. The Pioneers only scored two goals in the first 30 minutes of play and didn't score for the final 20 minutes of the half.
Megan Carver started the scoring for Denver in the first half, just 1:20 into the game. Cardinal sophomore Julie Christy responded though with the first of three of her goals two minutes late and the game was tied at 1-1. After a Lexi Sanders goal for Denver, Stanford finished the half by scoring the final four goals.
Senior Daphne Patterson assisted on three of the four goals and the goal scorers were sophomore Dana Lindsay and freshman Sarah Flynn. Flynn scored the first goal nearly 12 minutes into the first half and Lindsay followed just 30 seconds later. The game saw no goals for nearly 15 minutes. Flynn scored her second goal with just three minutes left in the first half and Lindsay once again quickly followed a Flynn goal with her with just two minutes left in the half.
The teams went into the halftime break with the Cardinal holding a 5-2 lead. Shane had a very busy for half as she tallied eight saves and allowed just two goals.
The second half started out well for the Cardinal as redshirt sophomore Bess Siegfried score a goal just 1:34 into the second half. Flynn completed her hat trick a little over three minutes later and the Cardinal held a commanding 7-2 lead.
This was similar to the 2007 MPSF Tournament Championship game against Denver, as the Cardinal raced out to a big lead but saw it slowly shrink at the end of the game. Lexi Sanders scored two consecutive goals for the Pioneers in a three minute span and the lead was cut to 7-4.
Christy came up big soon after as she scored two goals to give her a hat trick as well and Stanford led 9-5 with just a little over five minutes remaining in the match.
Denver furiously fought back with three goals in the next three minutes to shrink the lead to just 9-8 with a little over two minutes to play. The play of the game occurred with just nine seconds left when Karen Morton of Denver was fouled and had a free-position shot with a chance to tie the score. Morton was blocked though by Shane in an appropriate way to finish her illustrious Cardinal career. The ball bounced away and the clock expired and Stanford had their third straight MPSF Tournament championship.
It was also the third straight MPSF title game victory over Denver and the second year in a row that the game was decided by just one goal. The 2007 title game was a 12-11 final score.
Shane was named MVP of the MPSF tournament and the Cardinal also had three others on the team in Megan McClain, Katharine Fox and Dana Lindsay.
The 2008 NCAA Division I Women's Lacrosse Championship bracket will be announced on CBS College Sports Tonight, airing on the CBS College Sports Network on May 5 at 7:00 p.m. ET. The bracket will also be posted on ncaa.com