FRESNO, Ca. – The Mercyhurst Women's Water Polo team dropped their opening round contest at the WWPA Championships on Friday afternoon to Cal State East Bay by a  15 to 3 score. The Lakers will be back in the pool tomorrow against the loser of McKendree and Cal State Monterey Bay tomorrow at noon.

Cal State East Bay is the tournament's top seed out of the Western Division and it showed as they jumped out to a 6-0 lead over the Lakers after the first eight minutes of action. The Pioneers would add four goals in the second quarter to take a 10- lead into the halftime break.

Goal scoring was limited in the third quarter, however it was the Lakers who ended up outsourcing Cal State East Bay in the third quarter 2-1. The Pioneers earned the first tally of the quarter to go up 11-0 before Allie Dombkowski lifted the lid off the cage for the Lakers and scored their first goal of the contest just under four minutes into the quarter. Rachel Vlietstra would follow with another Laker score less than a minute later to cut the Laker deficit to nine.

The Lakers Sakura Gavin did add one more to the Lakers tally in the fourth quarter, however the Pioneers tacked on four more goals to make the final score 15-3 Cal State East Bay.