CHESTER (Pa.) – The Delaware Valley University men's lacrosse team opened its 2022 campaign at Widener University on Saturday afternoon where it fell into an early hole that it could not surmount en route to a 14-8 setback.

The Pride held a 4-0 lead after the first quarter and tacked on one more early in the second to cap a 5-0 run. Bryan Maits scored twice in the run to lead the home team.

The Aggies came to life with three goals in 2:40 including two goals separated by just nine seconds. Lucien St. Onge got the team on the board as he buried a feed from Jack Sprinkle followed by quick first-career tallies from first-year Nick Nardini and sophomore Nick Matthew.

Widener closed the half with a 4-1 run to take a 9-4 lead into the halftime break. Tre Williams was the goal scorer for DelVal as Ben Napieralski set the first-year up for his first collegiate goal.

The Pride had 15 shots on goal in the first half to the Aggies seven.

Widener got the first goal of the second half, 1:23 in but DelVal countered with Williams picking up his second of the game to get it back to a five-goal game, 10-5. After two tallies separated by one minute for the Pride, long stick midfielder Nick Bogdan got his first goal of the year just before the end of the third quarter to make it a 12-6 game to start the fourth. DelVal had zero turnovers in the third quarter and forced Widener into five.

In the fourth, the two teams traded a pair of goals  before the final horn blew and the Aggies were out of time. DelVal got goals from Sprinkle and Alex Axman in the fourth.

Sprinkle and Williams led the Aggies with two points as eight players in total got on the scoresheet. Bogdan and Michael Florig each had two caused turnovers and faceoff specialist Nick Matthew had two ground balls and went 10-for-21 on draws.

DelVal has 10 days off before its next contest at Neumann University on February 22 at 5 p.m.