Pride earn Senior Day win over Ottawa behind La Belle's eight goals

DUBUQUE, Iowa - Playing their second-straight home game of the week, the Clarke University men's lacrosse team earned a Saturday afternoon win over Ottawa University by a final score of 16-6 at Burrows Field for CU's third Heart of America Athletic Conference win of the season.

Prior to Saturday's action, the Pride honored eight seniors including Doug Powless, Justyse White, Matt Archer, Alex Beard, Jake Weller, Dominick Knazur, Brandon Drumm, and Abraham Agundez for this season's Senior Day ceremony on their last weekend home game of the 2025 regular season.

A strong first half saw Clarke go into the halftime break up 9-2 including a 4-0 first quarter on goals from Archer, White, then two from Xavier Howard with Henry La Belle, Siage Moran, and Alex Beard producing assists.

From that point on, La Belle would steal the show, scoring a hat trick and then some in the second quarter as he scored five-straight goals in the period to take the 4-0 CU lead to 9-0 as he scored off of assists from Howard, Isaac Margala, Archer, and White and got another unassisted.

The sophomore wouldn't stop there as he added three more goals in the second half to finish with a career-high eight goals, the most by any member of the Pride this season, and a nine-point game including his assist on the first goal of the game.

White (two goals, three assists), Archer (one goal, three assists), Howard (two goals, two assists), and margala (one goal, two assists) all had multi-point performances in support of La Belle's career day to provide plenty of offense for Weller in net as he made six saves on 12 shots on goal against for his first career collegiate win in goal.

Continuing what's been a fairly strong season at the faceoff dot all season, Agundez and Josh Pote would combine to win 17 of the 25 draws in the game with Pote winning six of his seven chances and Agundez going 11-for-18.

Clarke men's lacrosse will dip their toes back into the non-conference waters for the final time in the 2025 season when they travel to Ashland, Wis. to face Northland College on Monday, Apr. 7 with a 3:00 p.m. CT scheduled opening faceoff.