The Colgate women's lacrosse team used a strong first half effort to jump out to a big lead early and hung on to a 9-8 win over the Holy Cross Crusaders Saturday afternoon at Beyer-Small '76 Field. Payton Gabriel (Lakewood, Colorado) led all scorers with three points and scored a pair of goals to become the only Raider to have a goal in all nine games this season. Gabriel has 14 goals on the year, the second most on the team. Noelle Patterson (Vestal, New York) also put home two goals for the Raiders and seven different players managed to score in S33149aturday's game. Goalkeeper Samantha Croston (Mount Sinai, New York) continued to shine in her first year as the starter with eight saves in the victory and remained one of the best goalkeepers in the Patriot League. The Raiders scored in bunches in the first half Saturday and managed to take a five-goal lead early in the second half. After Keely Connors gave Holy Cross an initial 1-0 lead, the Raiders scored a pair of goals within 23 seconds of each other to take a 2-1 lead from Gabriel and Natalie Washuta (Chatham, New Jersey). Holy Cross tied the game with 21:24 left in the half before another pair of Colgate goals from Patterson and Tara Atkinson (Lloyd Harbor, New York) within two minutes of each. Leading 4-3, Colgate extended its lead to five with three straight goals to close out the first half and another to start the scoring in the second half. Kristen Brigagliano (Brightwaters, New York) and Gabriel scored within one minute of each other before Natalie Gwynn (Canandaigua, New York) closed the half with her eighth of the season. Olivia Duarte (Middletown, Delaware) scored the first goal of the second half with 19:41 to go in the period for Colgate's largest lead of the game before Holy Cross began to chip away. The Crusaders scored a pair of goals within 37 seconds and added another one nearly four minutes later to cut the Raiders' lead to two. Patterson scored the game-winning goal for the Raiders on a free-position shot with 6:51 to go in the second half before the Crusaders scored a pair of goals within 35 seconds of each other to pull within a goal. Colgate's defense stood strong later as the Raiders held on for the win. BOTTOM LINE33148 Colgate 9, Holy Cross 8 WIN/LOSS RECORDS The Raiders picked up their first Patriot League win of the season to improve to 6-3 (1-1 PL) while the Crusaders fell to 3-7 (1-1 PL) wit the loss KEY RAIDER INFO -Gabriel scored a pair of goals to extend her goal streak to nine games, the only Raider to score a goal in every game this season -Gabriel now has a career-high 14 goals and 17 points after her performance -Patterson tallied her first career two-goal game and had just one goal this season prior to Saturday -She also added two groundballs -Croston tallied eight saves in the win to go along with five groundballs -She remains first in the Patriot League in GAA (8.92), save percentage (.518) and saves per game (9.78) -Duarte had a goal and an assist for her second two-point game of the season and grabbed three draw controls -Atkinson finished with a goal, caused turnover and three groundballs -Washuta scored a goal and also caused a turnover -Madeline Barcia (Manhasset, New York) scooped up five groundballs -Brigagliano also had a goal and an assist to go along with a caused turnover and groundball -Gwynn scored a goal for the third straight game -Chelsea Taylor (Manhasset, New York) had four groundballs while Lexi Luthringer (Syracuse, New York) caused a pair of turnovers and had two groundballs FACTS AND FIGURES -Holy Cross outshot Colgate 26-18 but only had a 16-13 edge in shots on goal -The Raiders had 30 groundballs compared to the Crusaders 26 -Colgate was 15 for 22 on clears while Holy Cross was 19 for 25 -Colgate also had 25 turnovers compared to 21 for Holy Cross FROM THE SOURCE Head Coach Heather Young "I'm really proud of the team for being able to come up with some pretty big plays when it counted. Kudos to Holy Cross, they had a great game plan. We were able to move the ball pretty well in the first half but the made some adjustments at halftime, which we weren't able to adjust to that well. I'm really proud of Lexi doing a great job running in and Ingrid's groundball at the end to seal the deal was phenomenal." "Sam is always calm and composed, she's such a force back there defensively. There is a big amount of trust between her and the defenders and it really shows. Our defense buckled down when we needed to get some big stops and got some big charge calls that were really great for us. Sam is definitely the backbone of all of that." UP NEXT Colgate women's lacrosse continues its two-game homestand Wednesday night when the Raiders host the Boston University Terriers at 5 p.m.