Both of Covenant’s lacrosse programs earned top seed billing on Sunday from the VISAA and two days later, both teams made the most of it, as the girls set the tone with a 17-7 win over Steward and the boys following suite with a 14-7 win, also over Steward.
Dittmar gets Eagles rolling
It took only four minutes for the Covenant girls to establish themselves. In that time span the Eagles had a 3-0 lead and cruised to their 17-7 Division 2 quarterfinal victory thanks to 12 first half goals.
“The last past week in practice we’ve really been working on our intensity, our focus and really taking care of the ball, managing it and really making smart decisions,” said Covenant coach Tara Hohenshelt. “We have a small squad so we wanted to make sure we were managing the clock, the tempo of the game so we could be smart about using all our players for the entire game.”
Virginia Dittmar scored the first of her four goals in the first half just 39 seconds into the game. The Eagles took their time offensively, working around Steward’s defense to start, but were soon able to get things going on the break as well. With 12 minutes left until the break, Covenant had an 8-1 start to work with and had a nine goal advantage heading into the second half.
“We have Rachel Rapp and Sadie Bryant who are great on the draws and after that we just stayed calm, spread out and worked together so we started really strong,” Dittmar said. “We had a problem (in our regular season meeting with them) of wanting to collapse in, but today we really spread out and held our space and so this was definitely different than before.”
With Dittmar’s fifth goal coming at the start of the second half, the Eagles earned a running clock being up by 10 and saw time melt away. Steward was able to keep pace with Covenant in the second half, there was no slowing down the clock or getting closer than within 10, allowing the Eagles to wrap up the win. And with a team where the bench is seemingly non-existent, the easy tempo and shortened game was a big bonus.
“We wanted to manage it and make sure it didn’t get out of control,” Hohenshelt said.
Charlotte Delany, Jenna Clark and Ellie McKay also scored multiple goals for Covenant. Delany had four to with her two assists. Clark finished with two goals and two assists. McKay notched two goals. Rapp and Bryant both had five draw controls and a goal.
Boys overcome early turnovers
The Covenant boys strength on defense has allowed its new piece on offense to develop all year into an efficient unit of goal scorers who are at their best when they constantly move the ball around. Unfornuately on Tuesday, the Eagles struggled with turnovers out of the gate against Steward making the first quarter a littler close than they would have liked. But after going down 2-1 to start, Covenant went on a tear between the middle of the first through the middle of the third quarter to lead the way to a 14-7 win its quarterfinal battle in the Division 2 tournament.
“I reminded the boys about what you do on your bad days, because that’s what defines you as a team,” said Eagles coach Mike Gardiner. “We had 15 turnovers in the first half and were winning the ground ball game, but not as much as we needed to. After that, they cut the turnovers in half and doubled the ground balls. So it wasn’t clicking early with the sticks, but the hustle came through.”
The 8-0 run that started with a goal from Peter Garland in the first and lasted just over 22 minutes was more than Steward could handle as Covenant owned the ground ball effort, particularly in the offensive end behind the goal against the opposing long poles.
“I think a lot of getting it going on offense was just slowing it down and taking it piece by piece,” Garland said. “In the beginning we were getting looks, but not the right way. But we really managed to bring it all together after that.”
But after trailing 9-2 midway through the third Steward was able to creep to within five goals of the lead heading into the fourth. But the five goal margin was as close as the eighth seeded visitors could get and a 3-goal spurt in a two minute span gave Covenant an 8-goal lead to work with and just 7:25 to play. The margin and clock, not to mention the Eagles defense was simply too much for Steward to overcome down to the stretch.
“We survived, played hard and tomorrow we’ll come out and tweak the offense and work on the fundamentals in practice,” Gardiner said.
Garland and Drew Gaffney each had 4-point efforts with Garland getting a hat trick and an assist and Gaffney coming up with the opposite. Win Marks also had a hat trick. Spencer Godine and Alex Ern both had a pair of goals. Austin Llera led the defense with eight ground balls while John Meade had seven.
Both Covenant’s lacrosse teams move on to the VISAA Division 2 semifinals. The girls will play at Collegiate on Friday at 1 p.m. while the boys will head to Randolph Macon on Friday at XXX p.m.
