Reading, PA – Messiah scored three goals in the first 25 minutes of the second-half to help propel them over Alvernia University on Tuesday evening. Marisa Weaver scored the first two goals of the game, with Olivia Snare and Ellie Lengacher also tallying goals less than a minute apart for the Falcons.

The victory marked the sixth-consecutive win for Messiah, and pushed their overall record to 8-2 and 2-0 in the MAC Commonwealth. Alvernia fell to 3-8 and 0-1 in conference play.

With the Alvernia defense sitting back on the defensive end, Messiah's attack struggled to generate a lot of offense early on. The Falcons' best opportunity came on their first shot of the game, when Sunny Gelnovatch's attempt from the top of the box hit the left post and bounced away. Even still, Messiah only registered three shot attempts in the first 30 minutes of action.

In the 34th minute, the Falcons finally broke through and took the lead. After Lilly Shover's free kick was knocked back to midfield, the Falcons passed the ball around the backline until Missy Beiner found Erin Sollenberger in the middle of the field about 25 yards out. Sollenberger advanced towards the middle and found Weaver inside the middle of box, who one-touched it with her left foot and snuck it past Jessica Plunkett for the opening goal.

Despite a few more opportunities, the Falcons failed to convert and took a 1-0 advantage into intermission.

Only 1:40 into the second the half, the Falcons scored to double their lead. Julia Kyne possessed the ball along the right sideline on the outer-edge of the Falcons' offensive third. Kyne turned to the middle and played a ball square to Weaver, who touched to her left and ripped a shot from deep that got past Plunkett.

Weaver's two goals marked the sixth consecutive game she has scored a goal, and her third consecutive multi-goal game.

The Falcons added another goal in the 68th minute, when Olivia Snare connected on her third of the season. Gelnovatch played the ball into space for Snare, who stopped and cut back the other direction, and then drilled a shot past Plunkett to give Messiah a 3-0 advantage.

Only 49 seconds later, the Falcons added their fourth and final goal thanks to Ellie Lengacher. Biener was able to get past a defender along the leftside of the end line, and crossed the ball to the middle of the box, where Lengacher was waiting to knock home the goal to put the score at 4-0.

The Snare and Lengacher goals marked the second time this season Messiah has scored less than one minute apart. The last time occurred when Weaver tied the program record with consecutive goals in only 24 seconds against Dickinson on Sept. 28.

The Messiah defense came through with another strong performance, as they prevented the Crusaders from getting off a shot the entire night; the Falcons kept their opponent from taking a shot for the second time this year, the other coming against Dickinson. The strong defense led to Sara Yunez earning her sixth shutout of the season.

The Falcons will look to remain hot when they travel to Westminster, Md. to face McDaniel College in their last non-conference game of the season. Kickoff is set for 4:00 p.m.