ST. MARY'S, Md. - A furious, late rally by the Haverford College women's basketball team fell just short Friday night in a 57-53 loss to Virginia Wesleyan College in the opening round of the Cherry Cove Seahawk Tip-Off Tournament at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

With a little more than four minutes remaining the Fords (1-1) trailed the Marlins (1-0)  by eight points, 53-48.

A Dominique Meeks layup pulled the Fords to within six at the 2:49 mark, then Nina Voith followed up with another layup 40 seconds later to trim the margin to four.

After a VWC miss the next time down the floor, Voith forced a foul from the Marlins and sank both of her attempts from the foul line to pull Haverford to within a basket at the 1:22 mark.

Forced to foul by a clock winding down under 20 seconds, the Fords sent Va. Wesleyan to the charity stripe where Shawnee Lewis was able to extend the lead back to four.

Voith answered quickly with another layup with 10 ticks left but the Marlins were able to sink both of their free throws at the end to ice the game and send the Fords to their first defeat of the season.

Voith scored a game-high 19 points in the loss and came up with seven rebounds while Meeks pulled down 16 boards and scored 17 for the double-double. Victoria Sobocinski added 13 points and five rebounds for the Fords.

Symone Newsome led the Marlins with 16 points while Rachel Miller chipped in with 14.

Haverford shot 44 percent from the floor and limited the Marlins to just a 24 percent evening, and the Fords pulled down seven more rebounds, 43-36, than Wesleyan.

The Marlins, however, scored 21 points off 24 Haverford turnovers to overcome the Fords' shooting edge.

Haverford will play in Saturday afternoon's consolation game at 2 p.m. against Arcadia University, 67-57 losers to host St. Mary's in Friday evening's opening game.