Box Score

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - Junior Alex MacDiarmid (New Hartford, NY/New Hartford) tallied a game-high seven goals and added an assist to lead the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) men's lacrosse team to a 20-7 season opening victory over Salve Regina in a game played at Western New England College.  The Red Hawks are now 1-0 while the Seahawks fall to 0-1.

RPI jumped out to the early lead in the opening quarter with freshman Paul Cerone (Ridgefield, CT/Ridgefield) scoring his first career goal at 10:51.  Salve Regina tied things up at 6:24 before the Red Hawks broke the game wide open, scoring six consecutive goals, including three straight from MacDiarmid, for a commanding 7-1 lead.

Junior Mike Sampson (Columbus, OH/Upper Arlington), who also tallied a goal in the first quarter, added two more in the second frame to give the Red Hawks a 12-4 lead heading into halftime.

Rensselaer, which scored eight goals in the third quarter, saw sophomore Josh Secora (Evergreen, CO/Golden) post three goals and junior PJ McComb (Newington, CT/Newington) add a game-high five assists.

Junior John Thibdeau (Altamont, NY/Bethlehem) picked up the win in goal, stopping four shots in the first half while senior Ryan Michels (Wilmington, DE/Brandywine) played the third quarter and made no saves.  Splitting the fourth quarter of action were freshman Chris Jones (Mahopac, NY/Mahopac) and Grant Kovach (Sparks, MD/Mount Hebron).  Jones posted three saves, while Kovach had zero.

For Salve Regina, sophomore Brian Walker (Marshfield, MA/Marshfield) made nine saves in 45:00, before giving way to classmate Phillip Buckley (West Boylston, MA/Worcester Academy) who posted two stops.

RPI returns to action on Wednesday in Florida against Wittenberg at 7:30pm.