LEWISTON, Maine -- Senior captain Paige Cote tallied a hat trick and the No. 22 nationally ranked Bates field hockey team ran away with a 9-0 win over Thomas College Thursday night at Campus Ave. Field.

The Bobcats (2-0) dominated play for the second consecutive game to start the season, outshooting the Terriers (0-3) by a count of 28-2. 

In the fourth minute of action, junior Maria Femia (Canton, Mass.) got Bates on the board. Cote (Auburn, Maine) drove the ball on the end line and passed it toward the cage, where a Thomas player got a stick on it. But Cote persisted, knocking the ball back toward the net off the stick of the defender and Femia found the lower left side of the goal for a 1-0 lead. 

Up 1-0 after one quarter, the Bobcats exploded for five goals in the next 15 minutes. It all started with junior Anna Cote (Auburn, Maine) beating two defenders and ripping a shot into the lower left corner in the 18th minute for a 2-0 lead. Then the Cote connection made it 3-0 when Anna was able to find Paige for a tally in the 19th minute, as the elder Cote scored from straight on while diving to her left.

In the 21st minute, senior Ella Blum (South Salem, N.Y.) made a move toward the cage, only to get denied by the Thomas keeper. The ball deflected out to junior Anna Lindeis (New Canaan, Conn.), who scored from the edge of the shooting circle for a 4-0 Bates advantage. 

The Bobcats got a fortunate bounce in the 23rd minute off a penalty corner. Senior captain Molly Griffin (Holden, Mass.) inserted the ball to Paige Cote, whose shot ricocheted off a Thomas players' stick and into the top left corner of the cage for a 5-0 lead. Paige Cote picked up another assist just over a minute later, delivering a perfect cross from the end line to senior Kami Lambert (Augusta, Maine) to conclude the second quarter scoring outburst. 

Up 6-0 at intermission, the Bobcats added to their lead a minute and a half into the third quarter. On a penalty corner, Griffin tallied a second assist, as Paige Cote completed her hat trick with a rocket from the top of the circle into the cage. The rest of the third quarter was quiet, until the 45th minute, when Blum scored a remarkable back-handed unassisted goal from deep, firing it from the left side of the shooting circle into the lower right side of the cage. 

In the 60th minute, Lambert scored her second goal of the night, picking up some loose change after Paige Cote fed the ball off the Thomas keeper from the end line and right onto the stick of Lambert. 

The Cote sisters finished with a combined four goals and three assists on the night. Through two games, the Bobcats are outscoring their opponents 19-1.

Bates is back in action Saturday when they visit No. 14 nationally ranked Bowdoin. The contest gets underway at 12pm.