Stories

STAB surges

The final score certainly wasn’t indicative of how tight the contest was for the first 45 minutes. However, what the final score did display was just how well the St. Anne’s-Belfield girls lacrosse closed the door. After fighting through a tight first half, and then holding off a rally from St. Catherine’s, STAB went on a scoring tear in the final five minutes of the game to earn a 19-12 victory in its first LIS contest.

“I thought we did a much much better job defensively in the second half,” said St. Anne’s coach Mary Blake. “I think that’s why the lead got bigger. We would score a goal and then make a stop defensively. I believe that’s where it all starts – if you can do something defensively, I think it jump starts your attack.”

While goalkeeper Cephra Stuart and the STAB defense held strong particularly late in the game, it also didn’t hurt to have a speedy midfield show that they can transition with little help.

After midfielder Corinna Coffin netted her second end-to-end goal with eight minutes to play, the Saints looked comfortable and in control with a five goal lead now in hand. However, Emily Hardy and Chaney Manganello each scored for St. Catherine’s in the following two minutes to make it a three goal game.

The next five minutes, though, would belong to STAB with Lili Satterfiled, Addi Bolin, Coffin and Marti Fox tucking in shots to seal the deal.

“I feel like we wanted to show ourselves that we were capable of making the margin a lot larger,” Coffin said. “The last five minutes we were super intense.”

St. Anne’s never trailed in the contest, and the game was only tied once and that was for the nine seconds it took Coffin to assist a goal from Chelsea Staunton after the opening draw. A little over a minute later, STAB was up by two as Kathleen Battle found the back of the net.

But the rest of the first half was a physical battle. The two teams traded goals back and forth four times. And with just over 10 minutes to play it looked like St. Catherine’s, trailing by one at the time, was going to have a chance to knot the game up in a tie, but after a turnover, Coffin was able to scoop up a ground ball and break loose and take it all the way to the net and finish to put her team up by two.

“She’s so impressive,” Blake said of Coffin. “She’s a cross contry runner and trains really hard and this is something that we’re just starting to see in the last two weeks, the speed that she has when she wants to turn the wheels on. You cannot catch her.”

Kate McCullough and Bolin each scored for STAB in the next seven minutes to double the lead, but St. Catherine’s answered with a pair of goals themselves in the final two minutes of the half.

Bolin lead all scorers for St. Anne’s with her 6-goal outing. She and the St. Catherine’s defense were all over one another and were at the center of a physical game that kept officials grabbing their whistles from start to finish.

“I think when the physical aspect of the game increased we definitely went a harder,” Bolin said. “We really wanted to shut them down.”

Coffin finished the game with four goals and an two assists. Fox had two goals and an assist. Staunton and McCullough gave the Saints five players with multiple goal games.

STAB (5-2, 1-0 LIS) hosts Bishop Ireton today at 2 p.m.

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