The sports recreation office honored former Laxcats coach Mickey-Miles Felton last night at the Laxcats game by naming the UA club coach of the year award after him.

The Laxcats honored Felton in their own way, beating Santa Clara 22-7 at Laxcats Field.

"It's always nice to give something back to someone who created (the lacrosse program) - without him, none of us would be here," head coach Adam Hopkins said.

Felton said the honor was a good end to his career and he enjoyed watching the Laxcats get another win.

"I recruited all of these guys," Felton said. "It is gratifying to see this caliber of play."

However, the caliber of play the Laxcats are accustomed to was not apparent until after the first quarter.

Within the first five minutes, freshman midfielder Mark Sumner was involved in a fight after a face-off. Sumner was ejected and will miss the Laxcats' next game.

UA played to a 5-5 tie after the first quarter.

"(After the first quarter) I pulled them off and told them, 'You can either fight with these guys all game, or you can play the kind of game you are capable of playing,'" Hopkins said.

The Laxcats responded with 6:16 left in the second quarter when they took a 6-5 lead on a goal by freshman midfielder Steve Luna.

UA did not trail for the rest of the game.

The Laxcats went on to score five more goals in the final five minutes of the second quarter to jump out to an 11-5 halftime lead.

The second half was dominated by UA.

The Laxcats outscored the Broncos 11-2 in the final two quarters.

Hopkins said the difference between the first quarter and final three quarters was the ground ball battle.

"We weren't winning the ground ball war early," Hopkins said. "If you win that, then you win the game."

Senior goaltender Greg Parkington had a different opinion of the team's slow start.

"We knew we could beat them," Parkington said. "We played down to their level. But we snapped out of it and realized we have to step up."

Hopkins has stressed that the team needs more players to contribute goals to the Laxcats' scoring, and he got a total team effort last night.

Eleven different players scored goals in the Laxcats' highest-scoring output of the season.

"I wanted more people to contribute," Hopkins said. "And that's what we did."

"It's good to see the balanced scoring," Parkington said. "That's what we need going into the playoffs."

The Laxcats' next game will be April 3 in Tempe against Arizona State.

The ASU game will be the final conference game of the year for UA and could determine the conference championship.