In its first season in the league, the Lake Forest College men's lacrosse team began Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference play with an 11-5 victory at Benedictine University Wednesday night.

Forester senior John Casey scored the first goal of the game less than two minutes in and added two more scores on the evening, including the 100th of his career. Casey is the program's all-time leader with 101 goals and 137 points.

Fellow senior Chas Dean accounted for the visitors' next two scores, both of which were assisted by junior Ryan Dousevicz, and Lake Forest led 3-0 at the end of the first quarter. Dean struck two more times in the contest for the third four-goal performance of his career.

A pair of goals from Forester junior Brendan Herbert, one from sophomore Andrew Koch, and Casey's second of the game made the score 7-0 late in the second quarter. The Eagles finally got on the scoreboard just 23 seconds before halftime.

Freshman Jackson Derosia netted the first goal of his collegiate career and Casey and Dean combined for three more in the third quarter. The home team also scored once in the period, which ended with Lake Forest on top 11-2.

Forester senior goalkeeper Andrew Widlar stopped eight of the Eagles' 10 shots on goal in the game's first 45 minutes and exited the contest at that point. He raised his save percentage to .590 and lowered his goals against average to 9.09 this season. Junior Jacob Lipson came on and made one save in the fourth quarter.

Lake Forest won 11 of 20 face-offs, racked up 33 ground balls to the Eagles' 24, and committed 20 turnovers while Benedictine had 26. 

Senior Connor Tartaglione led all players in the contest with a career-high eight ground balls while junior Jack Gillard finished with a game-high four caused turnovers.

The Foresters improved to 1-3 overall while Benedictine fell to 1-4.

Lake Forest's next two games will take place in North Carolina during next week's Spring Break trip. The team will play at Pfeiffer University next Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. (ET) and at Guilford College Thursday afternoon at 4:00 (ET).