Sophomore goaltender Natalie Slade made a career-high 16 saves, including five on free-position shots, to lead the Colorado College women's lacrosse team to a 10-7 victory over Colorado State University Pueblo on Wednesday night at Washburn Field.

The Tigers also received a huge performance from first-year midfielder Hayley Heinecken, who produced two goals and an assist during a 5-1 surge that began with her marker that gave CC a 5-4 lead with two seconds remaining in the first half. She struck for the first goal of the second half and set up Bella Scola's tally with 15:59 remaining in the game that put the Tigers up 9-5.

After the ThunderWolves got one back on Caira Lesseck's third goal to trim their deficit to three, Slade stopped five shots during a five-minute span and Olivia Dossett restored the four-point cushion with the last of her career-high three goals with 9:46 to go.

Dossett's first goal put the Tigers ahead 6:46 into the game, but back-to-back free position goals gave CSU Pueblo its only lead of the game.

Slade and the CC defense clamped down and allowed just five goals during the final 51 minutes. The Tigers held the ThunderWolves to nearly half of their season average of 13.20 goals per game.

"Slade was outstanding backstopping a very aggressive and unified defensive unit," head coach Susan Stuart said.

CSU Pueblo converted on just two of 11 free-position shots, while Colorado College was 4-for-9.

Emily Eller, who came into the game with 22 goals and 25 points, managed only one goal and one assist against the Tigers.

CC finished the game with a 44-34 advantage in total shots, while CSU-Pueblo had a 13-12 edge in ground balls.  

At the offensive end, eight different players recorded at least one point to help CC register a season-high 10 goals.

"We scored some really nice goals from the whole offensive unit with eight different players contributing on 10 goals," head coach Susan Stuart said. "This was a total team win as we had to shuffle our short bench and task several players to play out of their primary positions."
    
          
Colorado College Standouts
Courtney Zell had a goal and two assists.
Bridget Hanley led the Tigers with three ground balls and a pair of caused turnovers.
Abigail Turner finished with four draw controls, a goal, a ground ball and a caused turnover.
 
CSU-Pueblo Standouts
Ane Marie Horton stopped 15 shots during a little more than 44 minutes in goal.
Emily Eller finished with two draw controls, two ground balls and a caused turnover.
 
Notes
Colorado College improved to 1-2.
CSU Pueblo slipped to 2-4.
CC is 3-0 all-time against the ThunderWolves.
 
Next for the Tigers
Colorado College travels to Texas for a pair of games, the first of which is Friday, April 10, at Southwestern University.