Mary Blake has spent 28 years coaching girls lacrosse at St. Anne’s-Belfield. In those 28 years her team’s have played in a staggering 27 LIS championships. The previous three years, the Saints came away just short in those title bouts. This time STAB’s senior class put an exclamation point on its first LIS crown as they steamrolled past Collegiate 16-4.
“It feels so good,” said St. Anne’s coach Mary Blake. “To beat anyone three times in one season is very difficult, although it has happened to us. People would say how tough it is and I’d tell them that it’s happened to us, but that we were going to do it to someone else real soon. The girls came out and were just on fire today.”
To say that the Saints came out of the gate running is to put it lightly. STAB thrived early on its fast break opportunities, drew penalties and finished on those and also saw success on lengthy possessions, working the ball around.
“We came out of locker room saying we needed to start strong and with a fast pace,” said STAB junior Annie Cory. “This was a real important game for us but we wanted to have fun and still go at it hard. I think that helped our nerves to not be uptight, to not be rigid like we were on Saturday (against St. Steven’s and St. Agnes). We were a lot more relaxed and able to move the ball better because of the that.”
With Julia Haney leading the way early, just five minutes into the game, STAB went up 3-0. Five minutes later and the Saints were up a healthy 6-0 and well on their way to the routing with Cory taking the game over.
“Winning the draws and the ground balls, we’ve talked about how that’s been the key to winning any game,” Blake said. “It’s great going up 6-0 but you worry a bit about the mindset. So we kept telling them that they had to stay focused, stay consistent because you might say it’s okay to let a goal or two in. No. You can’t do that, you can’t let anything in.”
And the Saints defense more than did its job. Collegiate scored just once in the first half to cut it to a 5-goal game, but four straight goals from the Saints made it 10-1 at the break. Little changed in the second half and the Saints were able to melt time away with a running clock established with 21 minutes to go.
“I was really proud of our defense today because they’re the ones that got us going on attack and the attack took care of business,” Blake said.
With the game well in hand, the Saints did not have to wait long to wrap up a third straight win over Collegiate. And fittingly enough, the LIS championship win, STAB’s first since 2004, also happened to coincide with Blake’s 400th career victory.
“Win number 400 doesn’t feel nearly as great as winning an LIS championship does,” Blake said. “These girls have worked so hard all year and I’m just so proud of them. 400 wins is great, but maybe that just means I’ve been here too long. Winning the LIS championship, that’s what today was all about.”
Cory led the Saints with five goals. Caroline DiGiacomo and McKenzie Maurer both had two goals and an assist. A trio of seniors, Haney, Virginia Speidel and Sadie Bryant all finished with two goals each.
It was a busy week for the Saints who bounced back from just their second loss of the year at the hands of SSSA on Saturday with a 20-4 beating of St. Catherine’s on Tuesday and then this convincing win. STAB outscored its opponents in the LIS tournament 36-8.
STAB (20-2) enters the VISAA Division 1 tournament next week and will host in the first round.
