Regardless of the month, and regardless of the venue, the Jamesville-DeWitt and East Syracuse-Minoa girls lacrosse teams cannot avoid playing tight, exciting contests against each other.
So it was again on Tuesday afternoon at ESM Stadium, where the Red Rams gave up a five-goal lead in the second half, but still pulled out a 15-14 victory over the Spartans.
In a wild final sequence, ESM, trailing 14-13, pulled even on Alex McEachron’s fourth goal with 46.7 seconds to play. But J-D won the ensuing draw, and off a feed from Taylor Fallon the Rams’ Sonia Narispur beat Courtnee Notaro with 35.3 seconds left.
When Lauren Beville sent the ensuing draw to teammate Caroline Kopp, J-D was able to run out the ensuing clock and escape with the win.
J-D hosted ESM back on April 19, and in that game the Rams, down 7-5 at halftime, rallied for a 12-11 win, with the trio of Fallon, Beville and Taylor Bierwagen combining for 11 of the 12 goals.
The rematch was different, in that the Rams never trailed. Bierwagen, Narsipur, Fallon and Kopp hit on early goals to put J-D in front 4-1, and for the rest of the first half ESM was in a chase mode.
It was Haley DeVona carrying the Spartans’ attack, her four first-half goals preventing J-D from a runaway, and early in the second half ESM twice cut the margin to one, at 8-7 and 9-8.
Now Bierwagen took over, hitting on three consecutive goals before Kayleigh Cavanaugh converted with 12:58 left, making it 13-8 and forcing the Spartans to use its last time-out.
Refreshed after that time-out, ESM got goals from four different players – McEachron, Haley DeVona, Nicki DeVona – to slice the margin to 13-12. Then, with 2:48 to play, Nicki DeVona converted a second time and the game was tied.
Off a free position with 1:59 left, Bierwagen had the ball, but she passed it to Narsipur, who deposited her fourth goal. That led to one more comeback from ESM – and one more J-D response as the Rams improved to 9-5 and the Spartans fell to 10-5.
