HANOVER, N.H. - Junior Kristen Barry (Duxbury, Mass.) scored a career-high six goals, leading the Dartmouth women's lacrosse team to a 14-9 victory over Cornell on Saturday.

The Big Green won its fourth straight, improving to 7-3 overall and 3-1 in the Ivy League. After taking an early 5-1 lead, Cornell couldn't hang on and lost its fourth in a row for a 2-7 overall mark, 1-3 in the League.

The Big Red's Noelle Dowd opened the scoring with 3:31 gone before Barry tied it at 1-1, less than four minutes later. But Cornell scored four goals in a five-minute stretch - including two more by Dowd - for a 5-1 lead at 14:09.

After a timeout, No. 16 Dartmouth roared back with six straight goals for a 7-5 lead at the break and never looked back.

"I actually felt that for the first time this year, okay, in that there was this belief in our kids' eyes," said Dartmouth coach Amy Patton, "that we were going to come back, one by one. It's not a hole you want to dig, but I'm just so proud of them because I feel like we stuck to our game plan today and made the adjustments we needed to make."

She added, "Cornell's a good team. I know their record isn't great. But coming into the game and knowing their personnel, we knew we had a battle on our hands."

Barry was up to the task, opening the half with four of Dartmouth's first seven goals, before adding two more, plus an assist, after the break. Senior Margo Duke (Englewood, Colo.) aided the offense as well, scoring three goals.

"Kristen had one of the best games of her career," said Patton. "Not only was she really potent on our attack, but I thought she was redefending well in the midfield. She came up with some balls down in the defensive end. I thought she had a real complete game."

With two assists, senior Whitney Douthett (Newtown, Pa.) pushed her career scoring streak to 49 games. Douthett waited until the 12:40 mark of the second half to get on the board, picking up an assist on Barry's fifth goal of the day. The duo teamed up again at 5:47.

Senior Jen Pittman (New Canaan, Conn.) had a strong day, too, with a pair of goals and three assists.

In the nets, Dartmouth freshman Julie Wadland (Andover, Mass.) had 10 saves to go along with five ground balls.

Dartmouth has an important game on Saturday, April 14, traveling to Philadelphia for a matchup with the No. 11 Penn Quakers who are 10-1 on the season and 3-0 in the Ivy League.

2007-04-07