DENVER – Colorado Mesa women's lacrosse will play in the RMAC women's lacrosse championship game for the fourth straight season after beating UCCS 14-8 in the semifinals of the RMAC Tournament from Denver on Friday night.

Carson Dickey scored five goals to continue her 2024 dominance against UCCS while Justine Anderson, Caroline Ohngemach and Amber Wennerstrom found the net twice each for the Mavericks, who will face conference No. 1 seed and national No. 6 Regis in Sunday's title game.

The Mavericks improve to 13-0 all-time against the Mountain Lions, including the third straight win over UCCS in the tournament semifinals. The six-goal victory on Friday night was the largest margin of victory for the Mavericks out of this season's three meetings between the schools.

Shannon Murphy made seven saves in the CMU cage while RMAC Defender of the Year Kelsey Viger returned from injury to lead the CMU defense with four ground balls and two caused turnovers. Senior Taylor Scott, honored pregame for her academic prowess as the conference's Summit Award winner, set a season high and tied a career high with three caused turnovers in the CMU win.

Colorado Mesa took control of the game with a 6-0 scoring run that spanned from five minutes remaining in the second quarter until seven minutes left in the third quarter, with Dickey and Ohngemach each finding the net twice over the course of that scoring spurt. With five more goals against the Mountain Lions on Friday, Dickey now has recorded three of her six hat tricks this season against UCCS and 14 of her 37 goals in 2024 against just one opponent.

Dickey's career high of six goals came in the second regular season meeting between CMU and UCCS, when the Mountain Lions prioritized shutting down RMAC Attacker of the Year Justine Anderson and held Anderson scoreless but essentially allowed Dickey to shoot at will. Anderson got off to a hot start in Friday's semifinal, scoring CMU's first two goals of the game to give the Mavs a 2-1 lead halfway through the first quarter.

As UCCS's defensive priorities changed, CMU's offense again shifted from running through Anderson to running through Dickey with immediate success. Dickey tallied her first goal of the game to put the Mavs up 3-1, although UCCS would rally by scoring three times in a six-minute span to tie the game up at 4-4.

From there, the Mavs took over. Dickey scored back-to-back goals just 55 seconds apart, with Anderson assisting on the first, before Amber Wennerstrom added a third CMU goal just before halftime to give the Mavs a 7-4 lead heading into the break.

Caroline Ohngemach had a run in the spotlight after halftime, scoring twice sandwiched around an assist on an Ella Freemon goal in the first seven minutes of the second half to open up a six-goal lead at 10-4. Dickey would add her fourth and fifth goals of the game before Ali Bryant and Madi Kruis each converted woman-up opportunities as CMU opened up its largest lead of the game at 14-6 before two late Mountain Lions shrunk the final margin of victory.

The Mavericks outshot UCCS 29-23 and won the draw control battle 15-11. Both teams went 18-for-21 on clear attempts and committed 22 turnovers, with Bryant, Viger, Ohngemach and Kruis all finishing with two caused turnovers apiece for the Mavs.

Julia Patrick, a first team All-RMAC attacker, finished with a hat trick in the losing effort for UCCS while 2023 RMAC Freshman of the Year Brielle Fannin scored twice for the Mountain Lions.

The Mavericks will face a tall task in the championship game against the Regis Rangers, who marched through the conference schedule undefeated and rolled over No. 4 seed Westminster 17-3 in the first RMAC semifinal of the day. Lily Ferguson and Shea Murphy each scored four goals for Regis in the win over the Griffins.