Denver Ends Rigorous 3-Game Road Trip with 'Needed' Win Over Stony Brook

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Christmas came early for Jane Earley and the Denver women’s lacrosse team.

The graduate student scooped up a deflected ball and deposited it into the net with 14 seconds left Monday afternoon to lift No. 15 Denver to an 8-7 win over No. 12 Stony Brook at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium.

It was her eighth goal since her move from Division III Middlebury and by far her biggest in a Denver uniform.

“I’ve never had a play like that at the end of the game. It was really so exciting,” Earley said. “We really wanted to come out of this long road trip with a win. So just knowing that, obviously a lot of people made a lot of plays to get us there, but to be able to put the cherry on top was really fun.”

The victory over the Seawolves ended a long road trip for Denver (4-3), which included a loss to top-ranked Northwestern on Friday.

It was also the Pioneers’ first win over a ranked team this year after a loss to Michigan in February and consecutive defeats at the hands of Maryland and Northwestern before their trip to Long Island.

“We needed one,” Denver coach Liza Kelly said. “You’ve got to stay the course, you’ve got to keep believing, but at some point, you want to open the present and realize it’s Christmas morning.”

Stony Brook (5-2) led 5-2 in the third quarter on Charlotte Verhulst’s third goal of the game and led 6-5 early in the fourth quarter. But back-to-back goals by Julia Gilbert, the first on a free position shot and the second off a feed from Ryan Dineen, gave the Pioneers their first lead with 4:53 left. 

Ellie Masera’s third goal of the afternoon, a woman-up free-position tally, tied the score 40 seconds later.

A crease violation against Masera with 1:25 left in the fourth quarter, the Seawolves 19th turnover, opened the door for a possible late Denver winner.

That’s just what Earley delivered at the back post, when a Dineen pass deflected off Jordan Forte’s stick and the Stony Brook midfielder was unable to scoop the loose ball. Instead, it fell to Earley, who ended it late.

“I knew we were under a minute. I knew there wasn’t much time. I knew I had to get my shot off right away,” Earley said. “But other than that, I kind of got lost in the sauce.”

It was Stony Brook’s first home loss since 2019 when now-Seawolves assistant coach Sydney Pirreca scored the winner for Florida. That year was also the last time Stony Brook lost consecutive games.

The Seawolves, which last week celebrated a monumental overtime win over host Syracuse, followed with back-to-back losses to Johns Hopkins on Saturday and to Denver Monday.

“We should have had the momentum of beating Syracuse that should’ve pushed us through these last two games,” Stony Brook coach Joe Spallina said. “Best is the standard here.”

Spallina said the game had an NCAA tournament-type feel to it, minus the high winds and frigid temperatures.

Junior defender Avery Hines said there were valuable lessons to take from the defeat.

“I think we took goals lightly in the beginning of the game. We only [allowed] two in the first half, which, going against a top 10 team, that’s great,” Hines said. “I think certain goals in the third and fourth should not have been goals. But we’re lucky now. We learned this in the beginning of March [rather] than learning it in the beginning of May.”

For Denver, led by Gilbert’s four goals and Earley’s timely winner, it’s the perfect ending to a taxing five-day road trip and a win that could fuel them ahead of their Big East slate.

“I’ve just seen steady improvement. I think that Michigan really taught us a lot about what we needed to work on,” Kelly said. “And since that game, I just felt really proud of our ability to want to get better every day, to not kind of hang our heads in low moments and just to know that it’s a long season and kind of that whole adage of trust in the process.”