GORHAM, Me. – The Castleton women's hockey team opened their New England Hockey Conference schedule with a 4-1 victory over the University of Southern Maine on Friday afternoon.

The win puts the Spartans at 3-0 overall to go along with a 1-0 record in NEHC play. Southern Maine falls to 0-1 with the season-opening loss.

Hannah Rose, Hannah Wright, Lisa Kilroy, and Ally Brandland each netted a goals for the Spartans in the victory.

Kilroy opened the scoring for the game just 3:39 into the contest, scoring unassisted to give her team a 1-0 lead. At 9:01 of the second period, Rose tallied her first goal of the game on an assist from Anna Daniels to double the Spartan lead to 2-0. Five minutes later, Wright found the back of the net on assists from Brianna Keats and Aimee Briand to extend the Spartans' lead to 3-0. Late in the second period, Southern Maine got on the board when Olivia Barragree took a pass from Emma Burris and slotted it home to make it 3-1 in favor of Castleton.

In the third period, Brandland scored the final Castleton goal to give the team its final lead of 4-1 with less than 10 minutes remaining in the game.

Jess Cameron stopped 24 out of 25 shots in her third victory of the season, good for a .960 save percentage in the contest. Nia Kelly stopped 19 of 23 shots in just more than 50 minutes of play in her first game of the season before being relieved by Britney Evangelista.

The shot battle was even in the contest, as each team put 25 pucks on net. Castleton received one power play in the contest, however they were unsuccessful in finding the back of the net on the two-minute advantage.

Castleton is back in action tomorrow afternoon when the team travels to the University of New England. Puck drop is scheduled for 1:00 p.m.