St. Joseph, Minn. -- After winning five consecutive games, the College of Saint Benedict lacrosse team (6-3, 3-0 MLC) will return home to face Hamline University (7-6, 1-2 MLC) in Midwest Lacrosse Conferece play at 5 p.m., on Wednesday, April 24, at the CSB Stadium Turf Field.

Saint Benedict opens the season with a 6-3 record
Saint Benedict, which was been selected to win the 2024 Midwest Lacrosse Conference (MLC) championship in the preseason, is coming off a 9-6 victory over Cornell College. CSB, which moved to 6-3 overall, was led by four players who had multi-goal games. Emma Osland, Sami Hackley, Emma Halweg and Lizzie Schrubbe all netted two goals. In net, sophomore Chloe Lewis made fifteen saves in the victory. In two years as a program and in the MLC, CSB has gone 10-0 in conference play, including 3-0 this year.

CSB's season opened with a 20-3 setback at NCAA DII Northern Michigan (5-1) on Feb. 24. In game two, CSB dropped a 15-7 decision to University of Wisconsin-La Crosse on March 9. A day later on March 10, defeated Milwaukee School of Engineering, 19-4 as Schrubbe scored nine points.  Despite seven goals from Sami Hackley, the Bennies dropped a 18-13 decision at UW Eau-Claire on March 13. In a 16-6 victory over Hamline University, Saint Benedict received a career-high five goals from sophomore Grace Fitzgibbons while first year Lizzie Schrubbe added six points (2 goals/ 4 assists). On March 30, CSB defeated Elmhurst University, 20-5, on the road. On Saturday, April 6. CSB defeated the University of Northwestern 18-7, as Sami Hackley scored seven goals for the Bennies. Saint Benedict most recently defeated Cornell College 9-6 on April 20 where Schrubbe had four points while Osland and Hackley tallied three points apiece.

Up Next
Following the MLC matchup with Hamline University, the College of Saint Benedict will travel to Illinois for a MLC contest against Lake Forest University on Wednesday, April 27. The match will be played at Farwell Field at 1 p.m.

Program Records
Sami Hackley set the school record for goals in a game with nine against Augsburg on April 19, 2024 where she also recorded 12 shots on goal.  First-year Lizzie Schrubbe has set a pair of school game records including assists in a game with six against Northwestern in an 18-7 win on April 6 at home. She scored a record 10 points (five goals, five assists) in the 23-3 victory at Augsburg on April 12.   

About the Pipers
Hamline University is directed by Adam Dobis, who is in his second season. The Pipers are 7-7 and 1-2 in the Midwest Lacrosse Conference. The Pipers most recently fell to University of Wisconsin River Falls 23-2. Hamline has been outscored 148-to-142 in goals, owns a 284-to-274 advantage in ground balls and has a  180-to-140 advantage with opponents for draw controls. Maitland Luksan  leads the offense with 37 points, while Avery Wilson has 20 goals and 10 assists. 
 

First-Year Players at Saint Ben's making an impact
Lizzie Schrubbe leads CSB in points with 51 as a result of 22 goals and 29 assists. She collected 10 points against Augsburg on April 12. Schrubbe has a career total of 53 shots and 19 ground balls. First-year Emma Nelson has 12 goals and six assists. Twice this season (Hamline, MSOE), Nelson has recorded hat tricks (three goals). She has 18 shots on goal and collected 20 total ground balls. Emma Halweg has 10 goals, and five assists while taking 18 shots and recording four ground balls. Three times she has recorded two goals in a game.  Breya Sawyer has three goals and three assists while taking three shots. In addition, Tess Cavanaugh has recorded five goals on six shots and fielded six ground balls. She also has one multi-goal game against Augsburg.

Hackley has 70 career goals - 18 multi-goal games
Sophomore Sami Hackley, who was All-MLC a year ago,  set a school record with nine goals in a 23-3 victory against Augsburg. She has 33 goals and six assists on the season, and for her career, now has 70 goals, 101 shots and 57 ground balls. Hackley had recorded 18 multi-goal games, including seven straight, while registering nine games of four goals or more in her career.

Osland, Steinke and Fitzgibbons providing big contributions

Junior Emma Osland has 15 goals and five assists while taking 31 shots and picking up 23 ground balls. For her career, she has 36 goals and eight assists, including 72 shots and 44 ground balls. She has six multi-goal games in 2024 and 14 for her career with a high of five vs UW-Stout on April 15, 2023.

Sophomore Grace Fitzgibbons has 16 goals in nine games including a season-best five goals against Hamline University on March. 20. In her career, Fitzgibbons has totaled 47 goals and 21 assists with a total of 82 shots and 44 total ground balls. In her career, Fitzgibbons has 12 multi-goal games, including five this year. Five times she has registered four or more goals in a game, including a career-best six vs. Augsburg on April 29, 2023. 

Ella Steinke has totaled 12 goals and seven assists in 2024. For her career, Steinke has 52 points, 89 shots and 54 ground balls. She also has 13 multi-goal games including a career-high four three times against Hamline on April 10, 2023,  Clarke (Iowa) on April 4, 2023 and Elmhurst University on April 6, 2024.

Emma Schrepfer has fielded seven ground balls this season. For her career, Schrepfer has 24 goals and 14 assists totaling 38 points. She has 46 shots and 31 ground balls. In addition, Schrepfer has nine multi-goal games in her career with three vs Beloit (Ill.) on March 27, 2023.

Lewis claims back-to-back MLC Defensive player of the week honors

Chloe Lewis of the College of Saint Benedict lacrosse team, who helped the Bennies to a fifth win with a stellar performance in goal in a win over Cornell College, has been named the Midwest Lacrosse Conference (MLC) Defensive Player of the Week for a second time, according to an announcement Monday, April 22 by the MLC as selected by the league's head coaches. Lewis, a sophomore goalie from Brooklyn Park, Minn., played all 60 minutes in net in CSB's 9-6 win on Saturday (April 22) over Cornell College (12-3, 2-2 MLC) on the road. A political science and pre-law major at CSB, Lewis made 15 saves and allowed six goals, including just three over the last three quarters, as she had a 71.4 save percentage. Among all MLC players, she leads the league in save percentage at 64.4 percent and goals allowed average at 5.33. She is also fourth in saves with 29. In her career, she nine double-digit saves with a high of 19 against UW-River Falls on March 20, 2023. She also had 15 vs Lake Forest on May 6, 2023. Named All-MLC a year ago, Lewis is the second player at CSB to earn MLC Weekly honors after sophomore Sami Hackley was honored on April 10, 2023. She is the only player in school history to win a pair of MLC honors. With Lewis in goal, CSB has a 6-3 overall record and sits 3-0 in the MLC for second place, just behind 4-0 Lake Forest (Ill.). In her second season with Saint Benedict, she has allowed 8.78 goals per game (23 games), recorded 202 career saves, registered .517 career save percentage and accumulated a 16-5 career record, including 6-2-0 this year.

Head Coach Patrick Crandall - 2nd Season
Directed by head coach Patrick Crandall, the Bennies recorded a 7-0 record in the MWLC a year ago and finished 11-3 overall in his first year with the program. In that first season, Crandall was named the Midwest Lacrosse Conference Coach of the Year. With a 6-3 (3-0 in the MLC) record in 2023-24, Crandall's all-time mark at CSB sits at 17-6. CSB is now 10-0 in regular season MLC games. In his first season, the inaugural season of lacrosse at Saint Benedict, Crandall was named the Midwest Women's Lacrosse Conference "Coach of the Year." Six team members of the CSB team were named to the All-MWLC team while Sami Hackley was the conference "Rookie of the Year." Eight student-athletes were named to the Academic All-MWLC squad. Crandall was hired in late December 2021 to start the Bennie program, which began in Spring 2023.