SAN RAFAEL, Calif. – The Northwest Nazarene men's lacrosse team earned the first NCAA win in program history Friday, defeating Dominican University 11-9 in Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference action. 

Gordie Steidel made 15 saves in goal to anchor the defense, while Colton Altimus scored four goals to lead the offense as the Nighthawks (1-2 overall, 1-0 RMAC) jumped out to an early lead and made it stand up for the historic win. 

"With us being a new NCAA program, there are milestones in the back of your head – let's get our first goal, let's get our first win," head coach Tom Blanchard said. "For us to get a win in our third game is huge. I think we have all the ingredients here to do something special in the coming years." 

NNU was picked to finish sixth out of six teams in the RMAC, but the Nighthawks proved that prediction wrong from the get-go. 

Altimus, Gage Stokes and Ozgood Hawkins scored early to help NNU jump out to a 3-0 lead and eventually pushed it to 6-2. 

Lacrosse is a game of runs, though, and Dominican quickly pulled back within 6-5 early in the third quarter. 

The Nighthawks answered, though, as Altimus scored twice and Caleb Mainwaring added two more to push the lead back out to 10-5. 

"Our offense is trying to figure out chemistry and continuity," Blanchard said. "Sometimes, we let teams speed us up and that's just a byproduct of us being a young team. We did a good job early in the game dictating pace but we got away from that, so we need to find more consistency in our play for an entire 60-minute game." 

The Penguins eventually closed to within 11-9 with eight minutes left in the game, but the NNU defense stayed strong and finished off the victory. 

"We did enough on both sides of the ball today to get the win," Blanchard said. "Gordie played a phenomenal game today. He may be a freshman, but he's playing with confidence and poise and some of his saves energized the team." 

The lacrosse program was launched as a club sport in 2019-20, with Blanchard being the only coach the school has known. After four club seasons, the Nighthawks became a full NCAA Division II team this school year. 

After losses at Quincy, Ill., and William Jewell (Missouri) to open the season, the Nighthawks hit the film room to learn from those matches before opening conference play Friday. 

"Our whole message has been that we want to be able to play 60 minutes of lacrosse," Blanchard said. "We haven't done that yet, but these guys have never played together and are having to learn how to trust each other. We have driven home the idea of doing your job and today, you could see that. We had players who were trusting each other and it cut back on our mistakes." 

NNU is back in action at 11 a.m. Pacific on Saturday against Dominican (N.Y.) in a nonconference matchup hosted by Dominican (California) in San Rafael. The Nighthawks will play their first home match at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 21 against Westminster.