The Marquette women’s lacrosse team’s season came to a close Sunday afternoon at Valley Fields following an 11-5 loss to the Southern California Trojans.

After losing their Big East finale Thursday to the No. 18 Louisville Cardinals, the Golden Eagles had one more opportunity to improve their overall record.

On Senior Day, the program honored two of their own, as seniors Meredith Donaldson and Jennifer Zandlo earned their first career starts. In 11 minutes in goal, Zandlo made three saves.

“Jen (Zandlo) transferred here and took a risk on us and just has been an unbelievable work horse for our team,” coach Meredith Black said. “(Donaldson) also transferred and it’s great to have her on the attack. She was kind of plagued by injury while has been a great contributor outside of the field.”

Black’s side got off to a slow start in this match, as the Trojans dominated the first half of play, scoring the first five goals of the game. Freshman attacker Amanda Bochniak then found sophomore Taylor Smith, who put the Golden Eagles on the board with 2:41 left in the half to make it 5-1. The Trojans headed to the locker room with the four goal advantage.

The Golden Eagles came out inspired at the beginning of the second half, as they made it a one goal game with 12 minutes to play. Marquette’s  4-1 run was capped by another Smith goal at the 12:29 mark. She finished the day with two goals. In addition to Smith, the fire power of redshirt sophomore attacker Emily Donovan, junior attacker Nicole Gleason, and sophomore attacker Hayley Baas helped the team cut into the Trojans’ lead.

While Marquette kept pushing forward to get an equalizer, the Trojans caught them at the other end of the pitch, as USC freshman attacker Michaela Michael beat sophomore goalie Sarah Priem to make it a 7-5 game.  The remaining nine minutes were all USC, as the Trojans finished the game on a 5-0 run to spoil Marquette’s Senior Day.

“Overall I think we had a good year, we did a lot of things that we wanted to do in our second year,” Black said. “We wanted to make strides from last year and I think we did.”

Marquette’s second women’s lacrosse season comes to a close with Golden Eagles finishing 5-12, while going 1-5 in the Big East Conference.