After an hour and fifteen-minute weather delay, Lea Alexander put on a show for the Stetson Hatters in a 3-0 victory over Alabama A&M. Alexander's hat trick was accompanied by a shut out for Ashleigh Wise, the fourth of her career.
 
"Really good win for the group and it took everyone to get that performance including the bench," said Head Coach Jamie Souza. "Super proud of Lea, we've done a lot of work in training this week to keep our runs wide and timing your runs. To see that come to fruition with Stella and Kylie providing her with two opportunities, it was really pleasing to see. It was a good day overall.  I'm immensely proud of Ashleigh, she's come back to the team after taking the spring off. She made a big save against Wofford last week and got us out of trouble today a couple of times."
 
Alexander got the scoring started in the seventeenth minute on assists from Stella Comana and Kylie Overstreet. Comana and Overstreet displayed perfect give and go passing to get the ball into the box for Alexander who found the back of the net with her right foot. Overstreet tallied her second assist on Alexander's second goal in the twenty sixth minute getting just enough on it to get past the keeper. Wise went untested in the first half making two saves on two shots and the Hatters went into halftime up 2-0.
 
Coming into the second half, Alexander completed her Hatter Trick in the fifty first minute after the ball found its way to her in the box. The Bulldogs came close to breaking the shut out but the shot trickled past Wise and clanked off the post. She also came up big in the last fifteen minutes making several stops to keep Alabama A&M off the board. Alexander's hat trick is the eleventh in Stetson Women's Soccer history with the last one coming back in 2019.  
 
"The first couple of minutes it took us a little to get into our flow," said Alexander. "Once we did Stella made a great cross. In practice this week we have been working on build up to the attacking third and getting runs on the ball. On the next goal, Kylie made a great pass in, and they were really leaving that wide side open, so I just held that run. On the third goal, I just took a chance and got a little bit of luck with it going in. It's exciting, after playing defense the past couple years, I've been able to work on complete passes and complete runs and scoring goals for our team." 
 
The Hatters will have a week off before hosting Florida International at 7:00 PM on Thursday, August 29.